Pieces of Her

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapter 13-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “July 26, 1986”

Content Warning: The Chapter 7 Summary includes references to death by suicide.

The narrative cuts to the past, with a woman named Laura Juneau checking in at a conference in Oslo and thinking about famous businessman Martin Queller’s children. She is nervous, and identifies herself as Dr. Alex Maplecroft, who will be on a panel during the conference. The woman checking Laura in scrutinizes her, but a man named Nick Harp helps her get into the conference. He and Andrew Queller, Martin Queller’s son, know Laura (who is impersonating Dr. Maplecroft), but they are supposed to keep this a secret. Nick and Andrew remind Laura of her son, who was murdered when he was 16.

Laura escapes to the bar, which is deserted except for Jane Queller (later revealed to be Laura Oliver), another of Martin Queller’s children, who is playing the piano. She thinks about her own daughter, who is also dead. The women have never met, but Jane asks to sit with Laura, and the latter agrees. They discuss the upcoming panel, on which Laura (as Dr. Maplecroft) will sit with Jane’s father, Martin Queller. They also discuss Jane’s career as a concert pianist, and the fact that Laura saw her perform once.

Laura is nervous; she is the only woman presenting at the conference, and Dr. Maplecroft is publicly adversarial with Martin Queller, who formerly ran Queller Healthcare, and is moving into the ranks of the federal government. He is also the creator of the Queller Correction, which states that, historically, economic development has been built on the backs of a working class. This theory is now being used as justification for continuing to make decisions the same way, rather than as a warning of what to avoid. Jane tells Laura that she stopped performing because all the promoters assumed that, as a woman, she would eventually get married and halt her career. She is now a studio musician, and plays jazz and pop music, most recently in Berlin.

The panel is beginning soon, so Laura leaves after advising Jane to follow her own path. Laura makes her way to the bathroom and finds a bag taped behind a toilet tank. When she exits the bathroom, she is immediately escorted to the panel. Martin Queller begins and controls the panel discussion. After some time, Laura brings up Robert David Juneau, her former husband. After getting in an accident and suffering brain damage, Robert was not accepted by Queller’s group homes. He came home one day, shot his three children, Laura, and then himself; Laura survived with a bullet lodged against her spine. During the confrontation, Martin Queller realizes that Laura is not Dr. Maplecroft. Laura opens the bag from the toilet tank, which is supposed to contain dye packs to be thrown in political protest. Instead, she finds a gun, and shoots Martin Queller and herself.

Chapter 8 Summary: “August 21, 2018”

The narrative cuts to the present. Andy is driving through Alabama, thinking about everything she did wrong when she left the truck at the library, mistakes that might allow someone to find her. Again, she uses her dispatcher knowledge to envision what law enforcement will do when they find the truck. She has decided to follow Laura’s instructions, and is heading to Idaho to disappear. Andy wonders about the money in the car, and the possibility of her mother being a bank robber.

For the first time since she began her journey, Andy stops in a small town to check into a motel and get some sleep. She goes to the attached restaurant to get food, even though she is uneasy leaving the money in the unattended car. She falls asleep in the restaurant, and then goes to her hotel room to eat and watch the news. Even though her mother is still on the news regarding the diner shooting, Andy is surprised that there is no coverage of the intruder she killed. After taking a shower, she redistributes the money to a variety of places. Then, she decides to test whether or not she can use her mother’s false identification by going to the bar near the motel.

Andy is the only woman in the bar, which is full of locals; the bartender accepts the false identification. She is shocked to see the man in the Alabama baseball cap from the hospital (Chapter 3). He recognizes her as well, and treats their meeting as a coincidence, claiming he lives nearby. The pair drink and talk; when the man tells Andy about his father shooting an intruder when he was younger, she doubts their meeting is a coincidence. The man, who says his name is Mike, shows her the video of her mother from the shooting. He analyzes Laura’s position and actions in the video, and concludes that she was trying to stop the shooter from moving, rather than kill him. Andy is relieved by this, but still uneasy about Mike in general. Nonetheless, she leaves the bar with him, and they kiss in the parking lot. After the encounter, she realizes that Mike’s rabbit foot keychain is identical to the one in the truck that had been parked next to the vehicle she stole back in Belle Isle.

Chapter 9 Summary: “July 31, 1986”

The narrative cuts to the past. It has been five days since Martin Queller was shot and killed at the Oslo conference. Jane is at the Queller family home with her brothers, Jasper and Andrew, and her boyfriend, Nick Harp. She thinks about the shooting and wonders if they did the right thing. She knows Nick would say so, but she cannot quite believe it. The siblings are members of a domestic terrorist group, led by Nick, with members across the country. They planned the shooting, and other upcoming events, for the past year and a half.

Nick enters Jane’s room and tells her that the FBI has come to the house. Jane thinks about the fact that she is pregnant and has not told Nick yet. Andrew, Jane’s brother and Nick’s best friend, enters the room as well, and Jane notices that he seems ill, then realizes he hasn’t looked well in some time. Nick takes a shower and gets dressed. Jane and Andrew go downstairs to talk to FBI agents Barlow and Danberry, and their eldest sibling, Jasper, is there as well.

As the FBI agents question Jane, she realizes that they have started to piece together their group’s involvement. Nick enters, and Jane sees that the FBI agents are not charmed by him—and that he is not as smart as he believes he is. After answering a number of questions, Nick becomes confrontational and leaves. The FBI agents tell the Quellers that the real Dr. Alex Maplecroft is still alive, and they have received a ransom demand from a group called the Army of the Changing World.

Jane is worried that Nick has left for good and panicked over the agents’ behavior. She leaves the room, but Agent Danbury follows her and asks about her work in West Berlin as a studio musician, and the fact that she flew to the Oslo conference from East Berlin. He also brings up Patty Hearst, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the nature of cults and cult leaders. Jane rushes out and tells her brothers that she needs to leave. Jasper gives her the keys to his car, and Andrew leaves with her. Jane tells Andrew that the FBI is onto them.

Chapters 7-9 Analysis

Chapter 7 begins the second plot thread of the novel, the story of Jane Queller (Laura Oliver), her relationship with Nick Harp, and the Army of the Changing World. From this point on, the novel will flip between Andy and Jane’s stories regularly, as Slaughter builds tension and complexity in the 2018 timeline by giving historical context in the 1986 timeline. She builds a small connection from the start of Chapter 7 with the introduction of Laura Juneau. The fact that Juneau has the same name as Andy’s mother seems too coincidental, and gives the reader a clue as to the connection between the two stories.

Several important characters are introduced in this section: Jane Queller, Laura Juneau, Nick Harp, and Andrew Queller. Clearly, there are relationships between them all, but these relationships are unacknowledged—Laura obviously knows Nick and Andrew, as they help her gain entrance to the conference, and yet they pretend to be strangers. Likewise, Laura and Jane know each other, but pretend not to. These interactions are tense, but the reader does not yet know why.

When Laura takes the bag from behind the toilet, she recalls a similar scene in the film The Godfather, where Michael Corleone takes a gun from behind a toilet to kill another man. By drawing this parallel, Slaughter immediately evokes tension, even though the bag supposedly only contains dye packs. But when Laura opens the bag on stage and finds a gun inside, it is less of a surprise to the reader than it might have been without the movie reference.

While this 1986 narrative is developing, Andy, in 2018, makes progress on her journey—though readers are discovering the truth more quickly than she will. When we catch up with Andy again, she is already in Alabama. Chapter 8 shows that she has become smarter and more thoughtful about her escape. Andy has begun to Take Control of her situation, assessing her options and needs. Yet, Slaughter shows us that she still has a lot to learn, as she becomes involved with Mike, the man in the Alabama hat. The fact that Mike was at the hospital in Georgia and then reappears in the bar across the street from Andy’s motel is too incredible to believe—but she suspends her disbelief, partly because he is charming and personable. This charisma echoes the charisma that Jane sees in Nick. Andy allows herself to be swayed by Mike but comes to her senses after they part and makes her escape. She is still making mistakes, but her skills are slowly improving.

When we return to the 1986 timeline, five days after the Oslo shooting, the relationships between the various characters, which were previously mysterious, are clarified. Cracks are beginning to appear in these relationships, especially between Jane and her boyfriend Nick. Jane realizes that the FBI is beginning to see through their story, a theory confirmed by her conversation with Agent Danbury. Her discussion with Danbury is key to another theme—The Cult of Nick. Danbury alludes to several cults and cult leaders, drawing parallels between them and Nick. He also brings up Patty Hearst, implying that Jane may be an unwilling participant in Nick’s group, or at least had been unwilling at first.