The Girls

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes references to sexual abuse and coercion.

Evie is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. The narrative structure of the novel is told through Evie’s first-person point of view as she looks back on the summer of 1969 from her adulthood.

Evie is 14 years old in the summer of 1969. She is on the cusp of major changes in her life; she’s about to start high school and is being sent to boarding school. A typical teenager, Evie is self-conscious, confused about her identity, and searching for community. Evie’s internal conflicts are escalated by her parents’ divorce and their subsequent relationships with other people. Evie feels ignored and unseen by her parents. She is bored of her life and finds herself and her lifestyle terribly average. Evie’s life changes when she meets Suzanne, a young woman whose wild aesthetic communicates difference, daring, and excitement to Evie. Evie is immediately attracted to Suzanne, both attracted to her sexually and to the kind of person Suzanne is. Unlike Evie, Suzanne exudes confidence. In Suzanne, Evie sees a model for the kind of girl she wants to be.

Evie follows Suzanne blindly because she is desperate to be a part of something larger and more interesting than herself. Evie willfully ignores the signs of trouble at the ranch: the child who is rarely supervised, the ways Russell sexually abuses girls as young as 12 to coerce them into his group, and the commune’s obvious poverty. Evie believes in Suzanne and Russell’s narratives about stealing from others to help their ranch and therefore support their vision for a better future. Evie is fully invested in the ideals of free love, self-ownership, and rejection of societal norms. For a teenager figuring out who she is, such radical ideas are captivating and even magical. But Evie quickly and swiftly sacrifices her own moral code for these ideals. She starts stealing money from her mother to give to Russell. Wishing to and escalates her behavior further to impress Suzanne and ingratiate herself with the girls and with Russell. Evie starts breaking into homes with Suzanne and the other girls, but she eventually gets caught. Even when Evie is sent to live with her father, whose girlfriend, Tamar, is a positive role model and genuinely connects with Evie, Evie is too intoxicated by the ranch and Suzanne to stay. Evie develops her identity in parallelism to Suzanne. When Suzanne has sex with Evie, Evie is elated, but sex with Suzanne leads to sex with Mitch, which Evie did not want and did not enjoy. Evie is willing to have sex with men she doesn’t desire so she can be closer to Suzanne. It takes her a long time to figure out that her dynamics with Suzanne are not good and that she cares about Suzanne more than Suzanne cares about her.

Thanks to Suzanne, who rejects her the night of the murders at Mitch’s house, Evie is released from the cult’s influence and crimes. Evie has no choice but to return to life outside the ranch because the ranch ceases to exist. Evie still loves Suzanne, despite Suzanne’s horrific darkness and capacity for violence, because Evie sees her own darkness and capacity for violence reflected in Suzanne. Evie grows up and has an average, unexciting life. She is constantly haunted by her past and experiences acute fear well into her adulthood. As an adult, Evie can better rationalize and analyze the summer of 1969 and she has a good sense of what happens psychologically to a girl who becomes vulnerable because an identity crisis and the influences of society. Even so, as an adult Evie can’t break away from that part of herself.