51 pages • 1 hour read
Jeneva RoseHome Is Where the Bodies Are
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Trust Issues Break Apart Families
Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the novel’s treatment of drug addiction and death by suicide.
Home Is Where the Bodies Are is replete with characters who don’t trust each other. This theme is explicitly foregrounded in the novel’s initial pages when Laura cautions Beth with her dying breath by saying, “Don’t trust...” (17). Since Laura expires before finishing the sentence, Beth can’t figure out who or what she shouldn’t trust. There is a certain irony in Laura directing this comment to Beth because the latter trusts no one anyway. Beth is suspicious of each of her family members because she has been repeatedly disappointed by them. Nicole’s drug addiction has driven a wedge between the sisters, and Michael’s absence makes Beth feel he is unreliable. Similarly, Beth no longer trusts her father after his disappearance. When Michael and Nicole want to go in search of him, Beth remains at home, saying, “Dad has disappointed me far too many times, and I can’t do it anymore” (146). The lack of trust in the Thomas family unit has left each sibling feeling isolated, unable to draw on each other for support.
Mistrust as a family trait extends back to Michael’s first murder, which shatters the familial bond. Feeling he must protect his son while simultaneously unable to trust him, Brian becomes cagey and commits more crimes to conceal Michael’s guilt. This behavior ruins his marriage; since he does not initially confide in Laura, she believes he is a killer and feels betrayed and suspicious of him. This rift is never repaired, seen both in the siblings’ memories and in the home movies they watch in the present day. With two parents at odds with each other, the girls also feel neglected in favor of their brother, though they do not understand the reason behind this. The broken trust within the family comes to a head when Brian believes Michael killed his girlfriend and attacks him, resulting in his own death. The consequences of this murder spiral outward, representing the way the patriarch's disappearance unmoors the entire family. Laura and Michael deceive Beth and Nicole, eventually leading to Nicole’s car crash and drug addiction, Michael’s move west, and Laura’s further alienation from the family.
This fracturing of the family unit allows Michael’s deceit to thrive—since no one is sharing information with each other, no one can put together the pieces of his crimes. It is only when the siblings come together upon their mother’s death that his cover starts to unravel. By moving past their trust issues and discussing evidence, Nicole and Beth are able to uncover the truth, putting Michael behind bars and finally moving forward in their healing journeys. As a result, the novel ends on an optimistic note as the sisters forgive each other and begin building new families with healthy, trusting bonds.
Trauma Traps People in the Past
Aside from the previously mentioned trust issues exhibited by its characters, the novel also contains multiple examples of people who are trapped in the past by their trauma. This tendency begins well before the events in the story unfold. Laura was traumatized while in her teens when her father and sister were suddenly killed in a car accident. Ever since, she has been haunted by the realization that life can change in an instant. One of the reasons that she is fixated on sunsets is that the sun can be counted on to rise and fall each day: “There’s not many things you can count on in life, but that…is one thing you can count on. It will rise and it will fall—no matter what” (15). Laura also likes to capture her family’s story in journals and on videotape as a way of preserving an idyllic past. Of course, that past changes from a dream to a nightmare when Laura accidentally captures Emma’s corpse on tape. This single event transforms the lives of everyone involved. The minute Brian decides to protect Michael and bury Emma, the entire Thomas family becomes ensnared in past events that keep them from moving forward.
Brian’s actions are a prime example of this as he repeatedly intervenes in the murder investigation. Rather than let justice run its course and decide his son’s fate, Brian tries to conceal his son’s guilt, hoping to create Michael’s innocence by framing another man for the crime. This obsession with a past version of Michael—the Michael before the murder—prevents Brian from accepting his son’s violence and helping him in a meaningful way. Brian’s preoccupation with hiding this secret ruins his marriage and disrupts the family dynamic, ultimately leading to his death at Michael’s hands. Brian’s secret burial in the Thomas family’s backyard symbolizes his stasis, trapped by his familial trauma forever.
Aside from Brian, Laura is also affected by Emma’s death. She was already fixated on past tragedies and soon has more to add to her collection when she helps her husband conceal the girl’s disappearance. Her children feel the effects of this preoccupation even though they don’t understand the cause. Growing up, Beth and Nicole receive less attention from their parents, and they both resent Michael for what they perceive as favoritism toward him. This resentment carries forward to their reunion prior to the funeral. The two girls feel stuck in dead-end lives while their little brother goes on to acquire wealth and success, showing how the family’s sacrifice benefitted only him while everyone else suffered. Michael demonstrates a lack of conscience and criticizes his sisters for not moving on with their lives. He is free of the past because he makes everyone else carry that burden on his behalf.
In addition to this childhood trauma, Nicole becomes stuck after Brian disappears. Her car accident and subsequent opioid addiction would never have occurred if she hadn’t been driving around trying to find her missing father, and her addiction symbolizes her inability to move past the pain of this loss. Her sobriety at the end of the novel, coinciding with her best-selling memoir and new relationship, shows how confronting her trauma—unveiling her family’s secrets—allows her to finally heal and move forward into a brighter future.
The Cost of Keeping Secrets
Every major character in the novel pays a heavy price for keeping secrets. Before she realizes Michael’s true nature, Beth says of her brother, “That’s how he was as a kid, and most people don’t change. He overthinks, overanalyzes, and then keeps it all to himself, amassing clever little secrets” (33). Michael’s first clever secret is to frame Emma’s death as an accident to garner his father’s support. The ploy works, and Brian becomes a willing accomplice to his son’s crime. Brian is motivated by the desire to protect his family, and he believes that burying Emma’s body will signal an end to the tragedy. He plans to keep this secret to himself and never offers Laura an explanation. The decision ultimately dooms his marriage, as Laura believes her husband is the killer. While Brian knowingly sacrifices his wife’s trust, he believes this cost is worth keeping his family together.
When a culprit needs to be found for Emma’s death, Brian hatches another secret plan to pin the blame on Charles Gallagher, who is then hounded by the entire community. This secret leads indirectly to Charles’ death when Emma’s father seeks extrajudicial justice, beating the man to death. While Brian is digging a second grave next to Emma’s for Charles, he is also figuratively digging a deeper hole for himself, his family, and his community. He already feels guilty for concealing Emma’s death from Eddie, and this guilt leads him to conceal Eddie’s murder of Charles. Later, Eddie’s guilt over the incident has its own cost: his suicide. This illustrates how secrets can come at the cost of being able to live with one’s self.
Aside from the toll on his marriage and friendships, Brian’s secrets also change the Thomas family dynamic. His efforts to keep Michael in line result in the neglect of Nicole and Beth, whose own futures atrophy as a result. Additionally, he fails to recognize the toll that these secrets will eventually take on his own psyche. When Michael returns with the sad tale of his girlfriend’s accidental death, Brian can no longer remain silent. He erupts with rage: “How many more holes do I have to dig back here, Michael? My marriage is already buried in there, as are our souls. We are nothing because of you!” (266). Here, the various costs of keeping Michael’s secrets are symbolized by the graves in the backyard, both the literal ones of Emma and Charles and the metaphorical ones of his marriage and conscience. After Michael kills Brian, the task of burying the truth falls to Laura as she helps Michael dig yet another grave in the woods. Just as her husband carried the burden of these secrets, she assumes the responsibility for suppressing the story of her son’s crimes.
However, Laura also recognizes that family loyalty has its limits. As she says in her confession, “I’ve taken these secrets to the grave, but that’s as far as I can take them” (280). While she let Michael’s secrets ruin her life, she cannot pass that cost down to her daughters any longer. The effects of being liberated from the family’s burden are palpable in the book’s final chapter, in which Beth and Nicole are moving happily and confidently into their new futures.
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