Plot Summary
All Good People Here is Ashley Flowers’ first book. Flowers, Indiana native and presenter of the popular true-crime podcast Crime Junkie, Margot Davies, a reporter who is still troubled by the death of her childhood friend January Jacobs, examines the mysteries of tiny communities and the search for a life purpose. While Margot works to unravel the mystery of a newly kidnapped girl and learn how the case links to January’s murder, the chapters alternate between 2019 and 1994. After its August 16, 2022 release, the book was a New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller. This study guide relates to the hardback edition published by Bantam Books in 2022.
CHAPTER 1 – 6
The unsolved death of January Jacobs and the circumstances surrounding it, which have remained a mystery for 25 years, are introduced in these first chapters. The latter heavily relies on Wakauska, Indiana, the site of the book. In Chapter 1, the prospective character Krissy learns that her kid has gone missing and finds ominous writing on the walls of her kitchen. Krissy is instantly concerned about the town’s response when they learn of January’s absence since she is aware that “the folks of Wakarusa, Indiana, [can] create gossip faster than a spider spins its web”. In Wakarusa, the Veneer of Civility dominates the landscape, making people anxious about committing mistakes and becoming the town’s next gossip target. In the midst of a genuine personal crisis, Krissy’s thoughts are consumed by this façade of civility and are “What will the neighbors say?” .
Margot Davies returns to Wakarusa, her hometown, in 2019, 25 years after the events in Chapter 1 are recounted, to care for her uncle Luke, who is showing signs of early-onset dementia. Luke, who served as Margot’s father figure while she was growing up, remains close with her. She claims that Luke is the only trustworthy person in Wakarusa, which reveals Margot’s high opinion of him as well as her skepticism of the majority of the population. This suggests The Secrets of Tiny Towns as a further key theme. Luke and Margot agree that it is impossible to rely on the residents of Wakarusa to be forthright and honest, sometimes even exactly because of the town’s appearance of politeness. Margot is in a good position to unravel the mystery of what happened to January Jacobs and determine whether it is connected to the disappearance and subsequent murder of local teenager Natalie Clark, despite the fact that she was born and raised in Wakarusa.
Margot is at a turning point in her life since her her parents have split up from her and because her father figure, Luke, is battling illness. Her job performance has suffered as a result, putting her in a difficult situation. Because she was acquainted with January when they were kids, Margot has a personal connection to the January Jacobs case when she returns to Wakarusa to take care of Luke. Despite the police’s official denial, this personal link prompts her to look for similarities between Natalie and January’s cases. Margot launches her own inquiry as a result of her displeasure with the police’s lack of interest in tying the cases together. Margot is creating a sense of direction in her life at a time when she believes she has none, even if her main motivation is her desire to learn the truth about what happened to her childhood buddy.
CHAPTER 7 – 13
As Margot delves more into her inquiry, she explains why she has a personal stake in January’s case: the two were childhood friends, and Margot still has remorse over January’s murder. When Margot learned that January’s death was not an accident but a murder, she recalled having visions of “a faceless man standing in the middle of the street” considering whether to kill Margot or January. Margot believes that if January’s murder was a random act of violence, she could have been slain just as easily. Because of her survivor’s guilt over this, Margot is driven to crack the case of January, both to uphold justice and to assuage her conscience. Margot, who is currently in a dangerous position in her life due to diminishing finances and a lack of income, latches onto the case to give her life some meaning as she currently thinks she has little control over anything.
Margot discovers how frail The Veneer of Civility is in Wakarusa as she becomes more involved in the investigation, particularly in regards to Krissy. Margot notices a shift in the community’s perspective of the Jacobs family’s culpability in the wake of Natalie’s abduction, which most people seem to attribute to the same person who killed January 25 years previously. Margot is astonished to learn the following as she conducts interviews with the locals:
[The town’s mood] appeared to have turned 180 degrees. Even as they expressed their newfound support for the Jacobses, however, they still managed to cast suspicion on them—or rather, on Krissy. It also appeared that this change of heart had occurred so quickly that people were having trouble keeping up.
This quotation highlights a theme in the text that is the unsettling fact that moms face discrimination in society when it comes to issues including kid safety and child raising. Even though the Wakarusa residents seem to believe the Jacobses are innocent, Krissy is not included in their forgiveness. Accusations against Krissy’s personality that Margot overhears include: “Krissy was undoubtedly jealous of January […] Krissy couldn’t handle a family […] Krissy was definitely an inadequate mother”. Billy is conspicuously absent from this intense study of Krissy, which shows a predisposition against her even after her death.
Margot is aware that this prejudice might be hiding the facts about what really happened to January. Margot can’t help but draw a dark connection when she interacts with Detective Townsend, who is sure that Krissy murdered January: “It wasn’t that she didn’t think women were capable of depravity, but saying Krissy was guilty because she was different? Margot considered the burning women and Wakarusa’s original name, Salem . Margot uses this analogy to make reference to the ongoing witch hunt that Krissy has been the target of while the real perpetrator is still at large.
Only one chapter in this section is written from Krissy’s perspective, but it is one that significantly contributes to the overall plot of The Secrets of Tiny Towns. While she chooses to accept Billy’s marriage proposal instead of making it clear that she desired an abortion, Krissy’s memories of her adolescence show that she, like many others in Wakarusa, is prone to concealing secrets. She also refers to another mystery, which will not be disclosed until later in the book: the real parentage of the twins.
Even in 1994, Krissy continued to conceal information. This is demonstrated when Billy presents what may be considered devastating evidence against Krissy: her nightgown, which bears the same red spray-paint stains as the notes left in their kitchen. This strongly suggests that Krissy was somehow connected to January’s murder, which calls into question the veracity of her Chapter 1 testimony. With this unexpected cliffhanger, Flowers concludes Chapter 9 and does not pick up the story until Chapter 14.
CHAPTER 14 – 20
In this section, the topic of The Secrets of Tiny Towns deepens as it becomes apparent that even when individuals retain secrets to protect themselves from damage, the harm frequently still finds them. Krissy recalls further specifics of the night January passed away in Chapter 18. She admits that she never believed January was missing because when she awoke in the middle of the night due to the sound of a crash, she discovered her daughter dead at the foot of the basement steps. She not only recognizes that January has passed away, but she also believes she has identified the assailant: “Crouching over [January’s] lifeless body was Jace”. Krissy faces a difficult choice right now to safeguard her living child. In order to prevent her family from falling apart, she makes it appear as though Jace killed January instead of letting everyone else know that it was an outsider.
Krissy feels forced to conceal what she thinks her kid did in order to escape Wakarusa and the public’s attention. According to Krissy’s choices, the community and the media are somewhat to blame for the subsequent uncertainty around January’s since they had a part to play in it. When Jace tells Margot in his interview that “the media made us all look insane, but we were just a family,” he is confirming this. Despite not being joyful, we were typical. The Jacobses’ life is ruined by the criticism Wakarusa residents and the media inflict on them.
Also present in these chapters, especially Chapter 18, is the Veneer of Civility. The Jacobs family receives a visit from a group of mothers whose daughters had been enrolled in January’s dance class. They claim to be there to support them, but Krissy is too smart to fall for their pretense of kindness. She observes their reactions when they discover remnants of the cruel letters in the kitchen and accepts that everyone in Wakarusa will soon learn the truth, suggesting that the mothers only came to look in on the Jacobses out of curiosity rather than out of any genuine desire to help them. Jace also affirms Krissy’s innocence by saying that, despite his mother’s involvement in January’s case, she did so solely to shield him from criticism, scrutiny, and punishment. This gives further context to her request that Jace not be interviewed on television.
Margot continues her inquiry in 2019. When Margot starts to lose hope in the case, like when she can’t figure out where Jace is, she is reminded that she owes January the truth about what happened to her. This aids in providing her a sense of direction in life, keeps her from giving up when she becomes frustrated, and enables her to go back and follow other leads. Margot’s understanding of the case’s bigger picture in this segment crystallizes after she finds out Natalie was killed. She begs Jace to assist her in stopping the recent wave of violence against young girls in and around Wakarusa when she tries to get him to speak with her. Following the discovery of Natalie’s body, Margot feels a greater sense of urgency to solve the mystery. Her goal is now to put an end to the killings and find the murderer, not just to ease her own survivor’s guilt.
CHAPTER 21 – 28
These chapters thoroughly examine The Secrets of Tiny Villages, especially Krissy’s. Krissy thinks that she can release the load of secrets she has carried for years now that she has unconditional love in her life as a result of her (hidden) relationship with Jodie. The agonizing awareness of the grief her secrets have caused results from this, though. Krissy finds out that Jace did not kill January when she and Jace start writing to each other, and “the mere notion that Jace hadn’t killed January seemed like someone had upended her life, overwhelming her with both relief and shame,” according to Krissy. This information indicates that her son is not the murderer, but Krissy’s efforts to protect him prevented the authorities from identifying the real perpetrator. Also, it implies that she pushed Jace away out of hurt and erroneous fear. Even if her acts were motivated by love, Krissy starts to accept the harm she has done to her kid.
She also reveals to Jodie that the twins’ father is Dave, not Billy, and explains her motivations for keeping this information a secret:
No one appeared to have any suspicions that Billy was not the twins’ biological father, even though the town may have already assumed that they had been born outside of marriage. She needed to keep it that way and make sure she didn’t give anyone a reason to talk.
Krissy again accepts the unpleasant reality of the town’s never-ending rumor mill despite Wakarusa’s facade of civility. Krissy made the decision to conceal anything that would bring disfavor upon her, her children, or herself in the event that the truth were to come to light.
After her confessions, Jodie doesn’t desert her, and Krissy feels empowered to make amends by telling Dave that he is the father of her twins. It is “[her] moment to set things right, to make up for all [she] messed up,” Krissy says Jodie. Due to her fear of retaliation, Krissy would have never been able to accomplish this before, but after years of allowing other people’s opinions to control her life, Krissy demonstrates here that she is ready to walk into her truth. Though someone who “had once seemed so familiar to her” but “now [seems] like […] a stranger” murders Krissy, she is unable to make amends for these wrongs. Moreover, Krissy passes away without disclosing the information she discovered regarding Jace’s father or indicating whether she is referring to Billy or Luke. This isn’t addressed until the book’s penultimate chapter, when Billy admits that he killed Krissy and January.
After meeting with Annabelle and listening to her interview with Wallace again in 2019, Margot feels more certain than ever that Wallace is guilty: “She knew it inside her as firmly as she knew she loved her uncle […] The information was substantial and dense. It had bone-like solidity. After finding that Luke might be concealing his role in January’s death, she begins to doubt her sense of purpose in life as well as her conviction in his innate goodness. When Margot finds a picture of Luke from one of January’s dance performances along with a stack of dance programs in a secret drawer of his desk, she is devastated. Her perception of her uncle and her perspective of her entire existence are abruptly upended: “In a community where appearances were far more important than the reality, her unguarded and uncontrived uncle had been her savior. Evidently, he also wore a mask, like everyone else in this community. The realization that Luke might be like everyone else in town is extremely upsetting for Margot. The last few chapters will reveal Margot’s uncle’s motivations for concealing his secrets, but for the time being, Margot feels dubious about her uncle and therefore about her entire life.
CHAPTER 29
In these last few chapters, Margot finds the answer to her dilemma, giving her life a sense of purpose independent of January Jacobs. She gains confidence in her ability to speak up for herself and, most significantly, she rekindles her friendship with Uncle Luke. The concept of The Secrets of Tiny Villages is expanded upon by discovering the true reasons Luke maintained his secrets. Before Luke’s condition is fully known, the town’s secrets and those who maintain them have been seen negatively.
When it comes to Luke, Margot discovers that “[h]e was concealing Krissy’s secret too, not to avoid rumor, not to keep Billy safe, but to protect his wife and niece”. Luke didn’t keep his relationship with the Jacobses a secret out of malice, but rather out of sympathy for his wife’s struggles with infertility and young Margot’s unstable home situation. Margot’s viewpoint on secrets shifts, and she now recognizes that people occasionally retain secrets in order to avoid needless harm: “While [Luke] had told falsehoods and kept secrets like everyone else in this town, she now understood why he did. Even though he wasn’t perfect, he was nonetheless good.
As Billy Jacobs admits his involvement in January’s murder, Chapter 33 and the epilogue demonstrate how secrecy and The Veneer of Civility can serve as a cover for wicked deeds. The only chapter in which Krissy and Margot’s points of view are not present is the epilogue, which depicts Billy’s account of the murderous night. The epilogue explains that Billy killed January because of his wrath upon learning the truth about the parentage of his children, which had been one of Krissy’s long-kept secrets. Billy mentions preparing “for the performance of a lifetime” after killing her, meaning that he has put on the façade of innocence and decency he will maintain for years. In retrospect, Billy has planned his activities for the previous 25 years to avoid attention, content to let his wife bear the brunt of his misdeeds. He neither intervenes to prevent his family’s disintegration nor does he try to mitigate the criticism leveled at the rest of his family. While he had stated in prior chapters that Krissy did not murder January, the discovery that he murdered Krissy to maintain his façade of civility weakens his support of her.
The cliffhanger conclusion of the book leaves Margot’s story unresolved. Billy drags her down the basement where January died in her final moment after Margot realizes he is the real murderer. This strongly suggests that he intends to kill her to maintain his secret, just as he killed Krissy, given his past behavior. Margot, though, has refined her sense of purpose by this stage. Margot is more convinced than ever that girls who experience violence shouldn’t be “nameless and faceless, statistics on a sad and rising list” because Wallace has been brought to justice. Margot gathers her strength as Billy pulls her toward an unknowable fate in order to avoid being “another forgotten girl added to another list”. Margot is left in a dangerous but not hopeless situation after the cliffhanger.