If Something Happens to Me

The second main protagonist, Deputy Sheriff Poppy McGee begins the narrative feeling like she is stuck in the middle of her transformation from childhood to adulthood. In the first scene she appears in, she is sleeping in her childhood bedroom, which is complete with pink sheets and a Beyoncé poster—this highlights her uncomfortable situation as an adult who is struggling to be seen as responsible and respectable while her circumstances have thrust her back into her childhood home. Poppy has skills from her military police training in the army, but she believes she only has her new job as deputy sheriff because her father is the sheriff’s old friend. Her commanding officer in the army sexually harassed her until she broke his nose, and she was discharged after this. She is struggling to move past this, embodying The Difficulty of Escaping the Past. Poppy finds her petite stature adds to the illusion of her being a child. Looking at herself in the mirror, she reflects that, “At five-one, she looks like a kid dressing up as a UPS driver with a sidearm” (13). This reflects her fears of not being taken seriously. However, she proves that she has the tenacity and self-motivation to independently gather essential clues in Alison’s disappearance; she is also smart enough to put them together.

Poppy functions as the detective who uncovers clues about Alison’s disappearance. Her investigation provides insights into that mystery while also creating tension with some red herrings that raise suspicion about Ken and Dash. In the end, she pieces together the various puzzle pieces and brings all the major players back to Kansas for what turns out to be the final showdown. However, she makes the major mistake of trusting Fincher, despite Ken’s warning and clues to the contrary.

Poppy grows as a character as she accepts her new life in Leavenworth. At the beginning of the story, she resents being forced to come home after being discharged in the army to care for her father. She resents her brother Dash for being irresponsible, and she is convinced that her job as deputy sheriff is a dead end for her career. Over the course of the novel, she sees that her initial presumptions are all incorrect. She sees a new, more reflective side to Dash, learns about her dad’s toughness, and earns the respect of the local mayor, who appoints her sheriff on her own merits. She also starts to be open about her sexuality, beginning a tentative relationship with her colleague, Chantelle. Poppy overcomes her initial sense of being trapped in her childhood and grows into an adult she herself respects.

Michael, the unwilling mob accountant, and his daughter Alison/Taylor/Sophia are secondary protagonists with their own point-of-view chapters. They are also the characters at the heart of the mystery the other characters seek to solve. Because of this dual role, the narrative treats them differently as the book progresses. In Part 1, Michael appears as normal protagonist as he tries to navigate his mission of protecting his daughter. Initially, he wants to shield her from the knowledge of how her deceased mother’s gambling addiction forced Michael to work for the O’Leary crime family. Once he realizes that the O’Learys want revenge on his daughter for her part in Anthony’s bullying and suicide, his mission switches to saving her life by going into hiding. When he succeeds in disappearing at the end of Part 1, his point-of-view chapters also disappear until the other protagonists and the O’Leary antagonists locate him and his daughter again. He effectively disappears as a protagonist for a section of the novel. This preserves the suspense as the other major characters race to find him and his daughter. At that point, Michael regains his place as a protagonist as he works with Ryan and Poppy to find a final resolution to his conflict with the O’Learys.

Michael’s character arc emphasizes the theme of The Illusory Nature of Personal Identities. Unlike the other protagonists, he first appears through another character’s eyes: Shane O’Leary thinks of him as “a nice man” who doesn’t belong in the brutal world of organized crime (67). Shane is wrong, however. Michael’s quiet accountant persona comes from a conscious choice to leave behind the violence of his army service in Iraq. When Patrick tries to kidnap him at the end of Part 1, Michael uses the illusion of that harmless persona to lure him into complacency and then strike back. This signifies Michael’s transformation into someone who is willing to kill again to protect his daughter. Later, he kills Patrick and his companion to protect his daughter. After this, he tries to create a new life by using the money he stole from the O’Learys, but after they find him, Michael reluctantly adds Brian O’Leary, O, Shane, and Gina to his body count in order to protect his child. Michael exemplifies the theme of The Immensity of Parental Love and Sacrifice—he is willing to go to any length to protect his daughter, and he ends up dying to achieve this.

Shane O’Leary is the main antagonist. He heads the O’Leary crime family in Philadelphia, just as his father did before him. In his first appearance, he brutally murders a member of a rival crime family, establishes his use of violence to assert his power. Other details that emerge over the narrative, such as his practice of snipping off fingers to encourage people to pay their debts, underline his cruelty. Shane walks a path of violence and continues to walk it to the end when he dies as a result of his quest for vengeance on Michael and Alison.

Despite being the novel’s villain, Shane is a round character whose motivations are complicated. The very first scene in which Shane appears shows him prioritizing his wife and family: He talks to Gina even when he is in the middle of committing a murder, and he discusses how he can raise their son well and protect him from violence and crime. He regularly holds court in a local tavern to hear complaints from the neighborhood and his most vulnerable employees since he believes stability lies in giving back to his community. In the last chapter of the Philadelphia storyline, Chaz reflects on Shane: “For all his faults, he only wanted to take care of his family, spend time with the love of his life, Gina” (314). Ultimately, Shane’s world revolves around his family and his desire to keep them safe. However, he grew up in a world of violence and knows only violence. His father abused him physically and verbally, and violence holds together the business Shane inherited from his father. He is trapped in that mindset. After Anthony’s suicide, he is determined to exact vengeance on Anthony’s bullies, hoping that this will restore peace to the woman he loves. Shane exemplifies the theme of The Trap of Cycles of Violence.

Alison has a few point-of-view chapters and is a secondary protagonist. Her disappearance in the prologue is the inciting incident that sets the plot in motion. At the beginning of the novel, she appears to be a confident, beautiful, young woman with a talent for art. In freshman year of high school, Ryan admires her willingness to speak her mind and stand up for her ideals. Once they start dating, she surprises him with her kindness and humor, like when she makes him an elaborate “promposal” despite thinking that school dances are silly. At the end of high school, she takes the lead in pushing Ryan to consummate their four years of dating with sexual intimacy. Right after, she goes missing. As the novel unfolds, her identity is revealed to have many layers and secrets, showing that Alison herself doesn’t truly know who she is. Her character depicts the theme of The Illusory Nature of Personal Identities.

Alison began her life as Taylor Harper, a popular young girl at an elite private school. Her mother passed away from cancer. She participates in the bullying her friend group inflicts on Anthony O’Leary. After Anthony dies by suicide, she finds herself targeted by the O’Learys. She shows her headstrong nature when she runs away at the supposed WITSEC meet rather than leave her friends, but she then has the initiative to come back and save her father by hitting one of the mobsters with their car. Taylor then flees with her father to Leavenworth, where she assumes her new identity as Alison and vows to always stand up for what’s right. A video of her fighting off two bullies to protect an innocent child goes viral and puts her in the O’Learys’ sights again.

When the O’Learys’ kidnapping attempt fails, she and her father move to their family’s ancestral home in France, where she takes the name Sophia Rosseau. She makes a life there, focused on the art community, but she carries permanent scars from her two traumatic former lives. Her sense of alienation comes through in how she talks about her former identities in the third person. She tells Ryan: “If Alison was the good version of Taylor, then Sophia is the melancholy version of both” (293). At the end, her father sacrifices himself to save her. Whether she will succeed in overcoming her past trauma and forgiving herself remains uncertain at the novel’s close. Her character arc remains open-ended.

Like Alison, Peter Jones cycles through multiple names and identities over the course of the novel, highlighting The Illusory Nature of Personal Identities. He first appears when Ryan recalls him under hypnosis—he says he is a man with a completely nondescript face but who is missing both pinky fingers. Ryan calls him “The Monster,” a nightmarish figure who hurt him and took the girl he loved. When “The Monster” meets Ryan in Italy, he reveals himself to also be a victim of the O’Learys. Nora, who intuits this truth, calls him the Pinky Man, and Ryan adopts this neutral term. Ryan then discovers that the Pinky Man has been living a normal life as a church groundskeeper with his wife in England under the assumed name Peter Jones.

After the O’Leary hitman named “O” tortures and murders Peter Jones and his wife for information about Abigail, Ryan discovers that his original name was likely Glen Sweeney—that is how “he was known in Philly” (223). He had a gambling addiction. The O’Learys cut off his pinkies to torture him to pay his debt, and they then had him participate in the failed abduction of Alison in case they needed a patsy to take the blame. Ken and Michael spared him, giving him money so he’d have a second chance at life.

Chaz serves as Shane’s right-hand man and the novel’s secondary antagonist. He worked for Shane’s brutal father without complaint and continues to serve the son. He’s the good soldier who does the dirty work for the crime family without grumbling, even if he disagrees with the decision. This is a statement he makes about himself, but it is also apparent in his characterization. In his first appearance, he meekly warns Shane about the dangers of killing a rival from the Sabatino family, but he does it anyway. As Chaz predicts, this murder has consequences that lead to Chaz’s own death.

When the main protagonists finally come face to face with Chaz, they discover a surprising contradiction in his appearance that reflects his inner personality: “He’s older, has a kind face. But he’s holding a gun” (300). Chaz is a man who lives by violence, and he inadvertently raised his own son, Patrick, with that sense of violence. At the same time, he has grown more reflective as he’s grown older. He works hard to spare his grandson, Davie, from being exposed to that side of his life. At the end, Chaz spares the protagonists’ lives so he can be more like the good man Davie thinks he is.

Ken Walton is the tough but kindly sheriff of Leavenworth. He treats Poppy with respect and is well-liked. He is a close friend with Poppy’s father Mac and with Michael from their time serving in a bomb unit in the army in Iraq. He’s also a tough man who, in order to protect Michael, resists torture and even a waterboarding that Chaz believes will break any man.

Although ultimately proven innocent, Ken also functions as a potential suspect. Several minor characters, including Buckman and Fincher, drop hints to Poppy that Ken covered up Alison’s abduction. These clues turn out to be a red herring. While Ken did cover up Alison’s disappearance and later plant DNA evidence on MRK, he did so to protect her and her father. Not only did he act to protect an innocent girl, but he also talked Michael out of killing the Peter Jones. Ken does what is necessary to protect others, and he dies for that principle.