The Quarry Girls: A Thriller

Beth, or Elizabeth McCain, is a high-school senior in St. Cloud, Minnesota, who works at the North Side Diner. She is preparing to go to college at the University of California-Berkeley to become a teacher. She has red hair, which is why Ed targets her, and she spends the majority of the novel plotting her escape from a root cellar where Ed traps her. Before Ed kidnaps her, Beth worries about her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend and whether she should attend a party out at the quarries.

After Ed kidnaps her, all Beth can think about is survival. Beth exhausts every avenue to escape the root cellar, and after painstakingly digging a spike from underneath the dirt in her cell, she kills Ed and frees herself. After this, she immediately helps Heather and Junie escape Ricky’s murder attempt. Like Heather, Beth is a final girl, and her actions in the end demonstrate the value of female solidarity in the face of misogynistic violence.

Maureen and Brenda are Heather’s best friends and are in The Girls with her. Maureen plays bass and Brenda plays lead guitar and sings. Their character arcs both reflect The Impact of Violence and Misogyny on Coming-of-Age. Heather feels they are maturing without her, but their liaisons with men and older boys like Ed, Ricky, Sheriff Nillson, and Gary Cash show how easily young women can be exploited in sexist societies.

At the same time, they are shown to be complex individuals with their own desires, preventing them from being stereotypical or flat characters. Maureen begins to have sex for money at the beginning of the novel, exploiting men for their neediness and keeping it from her friends. When her friends see her performing oral sex on three grown men in Pantown, they resolve to protect her reputation, not yet understanding that Maureen is being molested. Maureen uses her boldness to get what she wants throughout the narrative, but she is harmed by the town’s most powerful men and killed by Ed and Ricky before she can grow up, and the men who victimize her refuse to investigate her murder to protect their reputations. With this, her death shows how misogynistic social structures treat women and girls as disposable.

Brenda, in contrast to Maureen’s fierce and bold nature, is nurturing and serene, someone Heather can depend upon. However, without positive examples of loving relationships, Brenda endures Ricky’s violence, brushing off the black eye he gives her. While Maureen’s narrative highlights how grown men can exploit young women, Brenda’s explores how young men, learning misogynistic norms from older men, harm their female peers. Brenda tells Heather she spends time with Ricky and Ed so she doesn’t have to feel alone, but Brenda—like most other characters in the book—doesn’t see that intimacy comes from building trust and honesty with her friends. Like Maureen, she dies before she has a chance to grow up and build confidence in herself.

Junie Cash is Heather’s younger preteen sister. She has freckles and red hair and watches her sister and friends to learn how to behave, frequently asking to practice her smile and flirting with them. However, she still behaves immaturely, reflecting her age. Junie symbolizes the corruption of innocence through gendered expectations for women and predatory behavior from men. Heather observes the way men treat Junie as older than she is, how Junie responds to this, and how Junie dresses like a woman even though she is still a child.

While Junie is being raised to remain submissive and docile, she becomes a symbol of hope for Pantown’s future at the end of the novel. Junie and her friends come of age after the conflict is resolved in the narrative, representing an opportunity to grow up in a Pantown with fewer predators and even fewer secrets. This shows how solidarity and actions to end sexist violence benefit not only the current generation but also future girls and women.

Constance is Heather and Junie’s mother. She is strikingly beautiful with porcelain skin and blue eyes. Due to her mental health condition, her behavior is unpredictable, and she struggles to stabilize her moods. This is sometimes dangerous, like when she set Heather on fire after discovering her husband was sleeping with her best friend, Gloria Hansen. Her condition is used to dismiss her concerns and keep her isolated, and she is even hospitalized against her will by her husband, highlighting how a sexist society can use sexism and ableism to control women.

Likewise, Gloria Hansen—Maureen’s mother—is a hoarder, a condition caused by a traumatic event. Often disheveled, she is embittered toward Pantown and its residents. After her affair with Gary came to light, she was mostly ignored by her friends and neighbors, and Gary refuses to help her when Heather asks. When Maureen is murdered, she begins to reveal her secrets, which helps Heather unravel the town’s mysteries.

Gloria and Constance decide to quit protecting the men who have hurt them, and when Gary is charged with molesting Maureen, they reunite and begin living together. With him gone, they both begin to heal, showing the corrosive nature of domestic abuse and the power of women to help each other grow and heal.

Theodore Godo, called “Ed” throughout the novel, slicks back his hair and wears a leather jacket, dressing like an “Outsider,” because he’s out of place in Pantown. He is much older than Ricky and Ant, the people with whom he spends most of his time and whom he convinces to commit rape and murder. Ed served in the military before being honorably discharged. By the time he makes it to Minnesota, he has already killed two women. He is manipulative and violent, and he commands power from everyone he meets. He kidnaps Beth, participates in Maureen and Brenda’s murders, and plans to kill Junie before Beth kills him first.

Ed is the primary antagonist throughout the narrative, a static and flat character through whom core themes like The Impact of Violence and Misogyny on Coming-of-Age are explored. He frequently comments on the law’s hypocrisy, and though he is not an honest character, he is not in denial about who he is. This stands in contrast to Gary Cash and Sheriff Nillson, who often compare themselves against Ed to view themselves as “good men.” Ed’s brutality comments on their actions as well as his, exposing the cruelty in how they treat women.

Ricky, Ant, and Claude represent three different paths for young men in a sexist society. Ricky has brown hair and hazel eyes, and most of the girls in Pantown think he is cute, which he uses to his advantage. He grew up in an abusive home, and Lourey hints that this contributes to his violent nature. To Heather, Ricky becomes unrecognizable by the end of the novel; Ed grooms him into a killer, and he helps kill Brenda and Maureen. His character development reveals the way socialization plays a part in development—he has been raised to treat women like objects, and he eventually comments on how easy it is to kill others. He becomes another Ed—the worst possible outcome for a young man.

Ant is Ricky’s friend, and Heather describes his eyes as blue, with one larger than the other. Ant is similarly groomed by Ed, and he forces Heather to take a topless photo before participating in Brenda’s murder. Unlike Ricky, he feels intense remorse about doing so and cooperates with the police investigation at the end of the novel. He also apologizes to Heather and can’t explain why he participated, showing how misogyny can inculcate young men into sexist violence even if they don’t enjoy or understand their actions.

Claude (pronounced like “howdy”) is Heather’s friend and eventual love interest, and he is a foil for the novel’s other male characters. Heather describes Claude as tall, reliable, and looking like Robby Benson, a 1970s teen idol. Claude stands out because he does not grow into a violent man like his peers Ricky and Ant do. Unlike Ant and Ricky, who are exposed to violence from their fathers early on in their lives, Claude comes from a stable home where both Heather and Junie spend a lot of time. He acts against Pantown’s sexist culture and respects women, showing an alternative path for men.