“I don’t know. I’ll live there forever, though, wondering. I was too afraid to think about her back then, but I’m not afraid to think about her anymore.”
“Rainy, can you take us back to that day when Sara helped you escape from the compound? We know now that Sara later became the victim of a serial killer who, fifteen years later, kidnapped your friend Braithe and held her captive. My God, the twists in this story!” She turned to the audience. Looking back at Rainy, she said, “Is there something you wish you could say to Sara and your mother all these years later?”
Rainy knew her face was on full display, including the mist in her eyes, which she tried to hide by turning away. But there was nowhere to go on live television. She thought of the note she’d slipped into Derek’s backpack. Your mother saved my life once. She unlocked a door that led to my freedom. Here’s yours. She’d included a wad of cash that she hoped would set him up for at least a little while.
She looked over at him now, where he sat at the back of the studio. He’d set down his sketchbook to watch. Rainy pulled a strand of hair from the corner of her mouth and looked directly into the camera.
“Your children are going to be okay.”
If you enjoyed this book, keep reading for an excerpt of The Wrong Family, the previously released thriller from Tarryn Fisher.
Acknowledgments
This was a very lonesome book to write. I didn’t include many people in the process. My largest thanks goes to Brittany Lavery, my editor, whose skill, patience and insight I am deeply grateful for. Sean, who designed another brilliant cover. The team at Graydon House: Pam, Justine, Heather, Randy, and everyone in marketing, sales and publicity. Thanks to Jane, my agent, and everyone at DG&B.
Thanks to Serena Knautz for being my right hand and taking care of things that overwhelm me.
I’m always grateful to my family, who support and stand by me through this dream journey I’m taking: Mom, Scarlet, Ryder, Avett—I do this shit for you. Special thanks to James Reynolds for his brilliant ideas.
To the bloggers and bookstagrammers: you guys are the wheels that make the books go round. Thank you for your passion. And to every librarian who’s ever pushed one of my books into a reader’s hand—huge gratitude. And to my readers, the ones who know what Ra ta ta ta means—#pln4life.
To my guy, thank you for picking up the slack, for the emotional support and for the daily back massages—I love you, Joshua. And finally a thanks to Jolene, who influenced my young life so deeply her name has shown up in two books. You taught me who I wanted to be: a badass.
An
Honest
Lie
Tarryn Fisher
Reader’s Guide
Questions for Discussion
At its core, this book is about women fighting back against misogyny. While Rainy’s experience is more extreme, how does this relate to recent news headlines—and the effects of the patriarchy on society overall?
How does Taured compare to and contrast with other real-life cult leaders? Think of Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Keith Raniere and others.
Discuss this book’s feminist themes. Particularly, how did it make you feel when Rainy decided to rescue Braithe, despite how Braithe treated her? Why do you think she did it? If you were Rainy, would you have gone after Braithe?
What did you make of Rainy’s decision to adopt her mother’s maiden name as her own?
What role does art play in this story?
Rainy has a lot of insecurities about her relationship with Grant, and these insecurities make her feel very human and relatable. How do you think her past informs that particular vulnerability?
The phrase “the sins of the parents will be visited upon the children” appears frequently in the story. Where do you think this phrase comes from, and do you see this sentiment playing a role in our larger society? How do you think Rainy takes that idea and flips it on its head?
Have you read any other books or watched any films or television shows about cults? How does Rainy deal with her trauma compared to other characters you’ve seen or read about?
Are there any parallels between Taured and Rainy’s grandparents? Why or why not?
What did you make of the ending?
Author Q & A
1. What inspired you to write this book?
A need to read it. I was thinking about the many male-driven movies of the ’90s like Face/Off and Con Air and I wanted to translate that into a female-driven book.
2. How did Rainy’s character evolve? Did the character come first and lead you to the story, or did you build the story around this character?
As I was finishing up The Wrong Family I began to see a woman in the recesses of my mind. She was urgent and she had long dark hair, and since I was still writing The Wrong Family I tried my best to ignore her. So I’d say in this case the character drove the story all the way.
3. What research did you do for this book?
I started with psychological research for the villain of the story. What type of personality disorder was I dealing with? How does my villain manipulate and why? I watched just about every documentary on serial killers and cult leaders that I could find.
4. Why the Vegas setting?
I was writing the final chapters of The Wrong Family when the pandemic hit and we went into lockdown. And if you’ve read that book you know it takes place in an old, dark house. My brain needed a vacation from not only pandemic gloom, but the setting of my last novel in general. So, I decided to set the next book in Las Vegas...and what do you know? It rains while they’re there. Sorry, not sorry.
5. You write about strong, complex women who are flawed in a very human way. Can you speak a little about the book’s feminist themes?
To me, that is all women: strong, complex, organically flawed. What I like to examine in my books are the ways our complex personalities overlap in society. In my last two books I wrote about how they overlap in a negative way, so this time I went in a different direction. I wanted to showcase a female bond that surpassed circumstance and situation. There is a choice being made in this book to do what is right regardless of how dangerous it is.
6. We see a lot of similar behavior and beliefs from men who lead cults. Was Taured inspired by anyone in particular, either from real life or fiction, or is he more an amalgam of these kinds of men?
Cult leaders of the ’70s and ’80s never seemed to plan ahead; their impulse-driven personalities were the draw to many of their followers. So, I thought: What would happen if there was a cult leader playing the long game back then? Taured’s goal was to raise the children in his cult to be his true loyalists. He was working with progression, not against it, which makes him a different kind of ’80s or ’90s cult leader.
7. Lorraine, Rainy’s mother—while only in the “Past” sections, nonetheless looms large in this story. Talk to us about her character.
Lorraine escaped her controlling religious family only to walk into a different type of controlling religious family. She represents the cycle women become stuck in. She was always willing to take action to change her circumstance, but she was often forced to make decisions out of desperation. No matter her mistakes, she loved her kid. She was a doer, and that’s what Rainy absorbed from being around her.
8. For you, what is the most important thing for readers to take away from this story?
Strength.
9. Your characters’ names are always so interesting and memorable. How do you come up with them?
I named Rainy after Mt. Rainier in Washington State. My own name means tower or hill in Gaelic and I wanted her to be a mountain of a force. Braithe was a shortening of the last name Braithwaite, which I thought was beautiful. The rest just fell in my head at the right time.
The Wrong Family
by Tarryn Fisher
1
JUNO