48 pages • 1 hour read
Shari LapenaEveryone Here Is Lying: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of child abuse, child abduction, and child molestation. This section also references the source text’s stereotypical and potentially stigmatizing portrayal of neurodivergent people.
William Wooler walks Nora Blanchard out of the Breezes Motel. He feels shocked because Nora, with whom he has been having an affair, has ended their relationship unexpectedly. William gets into his car and drives home. He finds his nine-year-old daughter, Avery, in the kitchen. She tells him that she walked home alone since the choir director sent her home early for acting out. William is upset because she knows that she is supposed to wait for her older brother, Michael, to walk home with her. Avery tells her father that she used the key under the front mat to get inside. William thinks about how his father used to hit him when he was disrespectful, but he knows he is not supposed to hit Avery. When Avery refuses to talk to him, he hits her across the head, and she falls to the ground. William feels horrified by what he did and picks Avery up, apologizing to her. William feels so repulsed by his actions that he decides to leave once more so he does not have to look at Avery.
Chapter 2 Summary
Michael Wooler goes to pick up Avery, but the music teacher tells Michael that she sent Avery home early. When Michael gets home, Avery is not there. He calls his mother and tells her he cannot find Avery. Erin Wooler tells her boss she has a family emergency. She tells Michael to check if Avery is at her friend Jenna’s house. Michael calls her back and tells her that no one is at Jenna’s house. Erin calls the police.
Chapter 3 Summary
William arrives home after Erin calls him. Inside, Erin and Michael sit with two police officers. The cops tell William that his daughter is missing and that the detectives will arrive soon. The officers confirm that no one has seen Avery since choir practice. William does not reveal that he saw her at the house earlier because he does not want to talk about how he hit Avery. Erin explains to the officers that Avery has behavioral problems at school because she has a learning disability and ADHD. The officers ask if there are problems at home, but Erin, William, and Michael deny any issues. Detective Bledsoe and Detective Gully arrive at the house. Bledsoe calls for a team to search the school in case Avery never left.
Chapter 4 Summary
Nora watches the news with her family, horrified to discover that William’s daughter is missing. She suddenly realizes that if the police discover William’s burner phone that he uses to communicate with her, everyone will know about their affair. Nora’s husband, Al, and their son, Ryan, join the search party to look for Avery.
Detective Gully notices a child’s jean jacket on one of hallway coat hooks. She examines it and realizes it is the jacket that Erin told them Avery was wearing to school that day.
Chapter 5 Summary
Gully shows Bledsoe and the Woolers the jacket. Gully says that Avery must have come home after school, and Michael tells them that she knew about the key under the mat at the front door. Gully speaks to Bledsoe in private and tells him that she thinks someone was with Avery in the house because the jacket is on the upper hook of the coat rack, and Avery would not be able to reach it.
Chapter 6 Summary
Nora waits at home, watching the news. She wonders if Avery’s disappearance is punishment from God for her infidelity.
Bledsoe tells the Woolers that they are treating the house as a crime scene. He tells them that they have accounted for Avery’s movements up until the moment she left choir practice, therefore she must have come home and left her jean jacket. The detectives tell them that they think someone was in the house with Avery because of the placement of the jean jacket on the upper hook of the coat rack.
Chapter 7 Summary
William knows he hung up Avery’s jacket without thinking because she had left it on the floor. William worries that the detectives will catch him in his lie, but he does not want to tell them about coming home because he knows they will suspect that he had something to do with Avery’s disappearance. The Woolers stay in a hotel for the night while forensics examine the house. Gully searches Avery’s room and finds a diary but does not learn anything from it.
Chapter 8 Summary
Erin wakes up in the hotel room the next morning and scrolls on her phone, reading with horror about Avery’s disappearance. She sees a picture of their house, blocked off with crime tape, and reads about how the police are treating their house as a crime scene. In the hallway, Bledsoe and Gully wait for them and tell them there is no news of Avery. Erin asks him why they told the press that they were suspects, but Bledsoe assures them that they did not speak to the press.
At the police station, the detectives lead William into an interview room. Bledsoe asks him where he was Tuesday afternoon, since he was not at work. William tells them that he went for a drive and that he does not have an alibi to confirm that.
Chapter 9 Summary
During Erin’s interview, the detectives verify that she was at work. Bledsoe tells Erin that William cannot account for his whereabouts, which surprises Erin because she assumed he was working. Bledsoe asks if she thinks William was home with Avery, but Erin adamantly denies it.
While Michael sits in the waiting room, he remembers the first time his father hit Avery, when she was six. William slapped her, and Erin came to her daughter’s defense. Gully comes to get Michael and leads him into an interview room with his mother. Bledsoe asks if William ever lost his temper with Avery, and Michael admits that he did. When Bledsoe presses Michael, he admits that William slaps Avery often.
Chapter 10 Summary
The next morning, Al tells Nora that Avery is still missing and the police are treating the Woolers’ house as a crime scene. At the hotel, Erin asks William where he was Tuesday afternoon. She warns him that the police know that he hit Avery because Michael told them. William hates the way he loses his temper, but he knows it is nothing like the way his father used to hit him. William thinks that Avery is the reason that he and Erin became distant in their marriage: Whenever he would hit Avery, she would always take Avery’s side.
Chapter 11 Summary
The Woolers return home. William knows they are searching his car and worries that they will find his burner phone in the hidden compartment. At the press conference, Bledsoe gives a detailed description of Avery and what she was wearing when she disappeared. Erin and William plead with the public to come forward if they have any information.
Nora watches the press conference at the hospital where she volunteers. Nora notices one of the nurses named Marion Cooke get up to leave, and she knows that this must be difficult for Marion because of her feelings for William.
Chapters 1-11 Analysis
This section sets up Stanhope, New York, as the setting of the novel. Lapena describes Stanhope as a quiet town with low crime rates and a close-knit community. When Avery first goes missing, no one can believe that something like that could happen in Stanhope, yet Lapena shows through The Impact of Secrecy and Deception how the inhabitants of Stanhope are good at covering up what they do not want their neighbors to know. Despite the town’s respectful view of William, the novel begins with William’s lies as his secret affair with Nora comes to a close. Lapena shows how William finds keeping secrets normal when he tries to bribe Avery after hitting her, telling her that he will not tell Erin about her walking home from school alone if she does not tell Erin about how he hit her. Keeping secrets and lying to protect other people’s feelings comes naturally to William, so he easily lies to the detectives about seeing Avery.
Nora Blanchard’s reaction to Avery’s disappearance reveals the ways that the impact of secrecy and deception inevitably leads to guilt and shame. Even though Nora broke off the affair with William, she believes that Avery’s disappearance is God’s way of punishing them for their sins. Although Nora does not think of herself as a religious person, she prays for God’s forgiveness because she believes that Avery’s disappearance is a direct punishment from God for their affair. Nora’s intuition foreshadows the end of the novel because her affair does drive the narrative. However, in this case the punishment comes from Marion, not God. Even though Nora feels responsible, William’s action of hitting Avery is the catalyst for the events that follow.
Although the Woolers like to keep up appearances in the community, their family dynamic reveals The Hidden Nature of Suburban Towns. When the detectives first interview the family, William assures them, “We’re just normal people. There’s no reason for anyone to harm our daughter” (27). Although William does not know how his actions have affected Avery’s disappearance, he tries to convince the detectives that the Woolers have nothing to hide about their private lives. The detectives catch William in his own lie, however, when Michael tells the police that William abuses Avery because of her disrespectful attitude. Michael shows how he has rationalized this abuse of his sister when he tells the detectives that his father slaps Avery because she deserves it. William’s attitude toward the abuse shows the intergenerational connection of child abuse: William convinces himself that his behavior toward Avery is acceptable because it is better than how his father treated him. In William’s mind, his abuse of Avery is justified. He expects abuse in a parent-child relationship, as this was the norm in his childhood. However, this veil of justification proves to be thin when William understands that he should not tell the detectives about the abuse. William and Erin hate that the detectives know about the abuse because they have worried about Avery telling someone for years. William’s abuse tears their marriage apart, showing the impact of secrecy and deception on families, particularly when families feel like they are forced to keep their lives secret from everyone else. Erin and William are said to have been potentially experiencing problems in their marriage because of the secret abuse of Avery, which Erin disapproves of. Despite these stressors surrounding the abuse, however, William continues to fall into the habit of striking Avery. This emotional characterization of William’s dilemma puts the reader in an abuser’s mind, emphasizing the hidden life of a seemingly normal suburban family.
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