The Stillwater Girls

Minka Kent’s domestic thriller, The Stillwater Girls, was first published in 2019. The Stillwater Girls explores human resilience and the impacts of isolation and family secrets through the story of two sisters, Wren and Sage, who have grown up in a secluded forest cabin. Their mother raised them to think of the outside world as dangerous, enforcing strict rules she says are meant to keep the girls safe. When their younger sister Evie falls ill, however, their mother leaves with her, hoping to get her medical care. Months go by, and their mother does not return, leaving Wren—the oldest daughter and one of the novel’s two narrators—struggling to decide whether staying at the cabin or venturing into the wider world represents the greater danger for her and her sister. Wren’s narration alternates with that of Nicolette, a wealthy Upstate New Yorker struggling with questions of her own—about her husband, money missing from her accounts, and a photo of a mysterious child.

This guide refers to the 2019 Thomas & Mercer paperback first edition of the text.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of physical abuse, mental illness, child death, and child abuse.

Plot Summary

Wren Sharp, 19, and her sister Sage, 18, wait in their family’s isolated forest cabin for their mother, Maggie, and youngest sister, Evie, to return. Maggie has taken Evie to get medical care—but after 63 days, the two have still not returned. Wren and Sage are nearly out of food and constantly cold and hungry. Because Maggie told the girls that the outside world is dangerous and convinced them that civilization has essentially fallen into ruin, they are terrified to leave their old-fashioned homestead to seek help. One day, a man comes to the door and knocks. The two young women have no memory of ever meeting anyone outside their immediate family, and they huddle inside in frightened silence until the man goes away. When the man returns the next day, they cannot stop him from forcing his way inside. He keeps them captive, eating up their meagre supplies and questioning them about their mother. Wren considers how to escape from the man, but she worries that something terrible will happen to her and Sage even if they do manage to get away. She feels puzzled by the way the man talks about the outside world and for the first time she begins to question whether her mother might have lied to them. When she digs up the supposed grave sites of her father and older sister, Imogen, and discovers them empty, she knows for sure that her mother is a liar.

Meanwhile, in a luxurious home at the edge of the Stillwater Forest, Nicolette Gideon struggles with suspicions about her husband’s behavior. Although she and Brant, a highly regarded photographer, have always had a happy and loving marriage, recently she feels he’s been pulling away from her. Believing that Brant shares her own sorrow over not having children, Nic has begun the process of becoming licensed as foster parents, but Brant seems less enthusiastic than she hoped he would be. After a medical emergency that she only dimly remembers ten years ago, Nic had to have a hysterectomy and cannot conceive children. She feels desperate to have a family and repeatedly dreams of pushing a baby stroller—only to look down and suddenly realize it is empty. Now, she carries an additional burden: she’s recently discovered a child’s photograph hidden in Brant’s things. The little girl in the picture has Brant’s very distinctive eye color, and Nic is sure that Brant is cheating on her and has conceived a child with another woman.

Nic learns from her father that Brant has been secretly transferring funds from her trust account. She cancels her yearly winter visit to her friend Cate in Florida so that she can remain in New York, hunting for clues. Brant reacts with concern that Nic’s seasonal depression will become a problem. He tells her again and again how much he loves her and assures her that all he wants is for her to be happy. When Brant leaves on a business trip, Nic goes through his social media accounts, emails, and phone records. She finds that on Fridays while she is at the grocery store, Brant has been making calls to an unfamiliar 212 phone number on dates that coincide with the mysterious withdrawals from her trust account. She decides to question Brant’s semi-estranged brother, Davis, to find out whether Davis knows anything about what Brant is up to. Davis takes the money Nic offers him, but he claims to have no information, saying that he has not spoken to his brother in months. He tells Nic that it cannot be easy being married to her because Brant has to expend a lot of energy to prevent her from having another mental health crisis. She has no idea what he is talking about, but she does not pursue the question.

Wren forms a plan to escape from the stranger in her cabin. She greases a window to make sure it will not squeak and then puts a heavy dose of valerian and melatonin in the man’s food to make him sleep. She and Sage slip out into the night, taking the bag in which the man keeps all of his survival gear. The two young women run through the forest until they see a large house at the edge of the woods. Nic, in her kitchen making some coffee after a rough night, hears a knock at her door. She finds Wren and Sage on her doorstep, begging for help. Nic calls 911. She feeds the two thin, bedraggled young women and tries to find out what’s happened to them. She’s surprised to learn that the two are sisters, as they look nothing alike. When Deputy May arrives, she and Nic work together to get at least a little information from the sisters. Realizing that Wren and Sage have been living in unusual circumstances and are badly frightened by what seems to be an unfamiliar modern world, Nic accompanies them to the hospital and then offers them a place to stay in her home.

Wren’s and Sage’s confusion and uncertainty as they adjust to the outside world is obvious to Nic. Nic takes care to make them feel welcome and comfortable, demonstrating how things work and arranging a private shopping event in order to get them some new clothes. Wren thinks that Nic is a very sweet person and marvels at her beautiful home with all of its modern conveniences. She is startled when she sees a picture of Brant in the hallway, because she recognizes the sea-green color of his eyes: they look just like the eyes of her youngest sister, Evie. Nic takes them to get their hair cut, and Wren chooses a shorter cut that her mother never would have allowed. She decides that she will get some art supplies and try to draw the woman that she thinks she remembers from her earliest years—the woman that looks like her, unlike the woman she has always known as her mother. That night, Brant comes home, and Wren notices tension between Nic and Brant despite the fact that Brant seems like a nice and nonthreatening person.

In the morning, the police arrive to tell Nic and Brant that a woman’s body has been discovered in the woods: they are running DNA tests to find out if she is Wren and Sage’s mother but based on the sisters’ descriptions of their missing mother, the police suspect it is her. Brant offers Wren the use of his studio space for her drawing, and she works on pictures of Evie and her mother to give the police as an aid in tracking them down. When Brant sees the picture of Evie, he pales and demands to know who it is. Shortly afterward, all of Wren’s drawings disappear, and she is sure that Brant has stolen them. When Brant tells Wren that he simply took the pictures to get them framed as a surprise for her, she decides that she believes him. Nic calls the unknown 212 phone number that Brant has been calling and gets a prompt to leave a message for someone called Beth. Sure that she now has solid evidence of his cheating, she confronts him. He admits that he has been sending money to someone and that he has been keeping a secret about Beth—but before he can explain fully, their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of the police, who have confirmed that the body in the woods belongs to Maggie Sharp, the woman that Sage and Wren have always known as their mother. DNA tests, however, have revealed that Sage and Wren are not Maggie’s biological children—and that the two young women are not genetically related to one another either.

After the police leave, Brant explains to Nic the real secret he has been keeping: nine years ago, in the grip of postpartum psychosis, Nic gave their infant daughter, Hannah, away to a woman in a park near Stillwater Forest. She then developed dissociative amnesia and has repressed all memory of this event. The little girl in the photo is their child, now nine years old. Someone sent Brant the photo along with a demand for money—and this is why he has been transferring money from Nic’s trust. Beth is an FBI agent helping him track Hannah down. After seeing Wren’s drawing of Evie, Brant now believes that Evie and Hannah are the same person and that Maggie was the woman Nic handed their baby to years ago. This suspicion is bolstered by the fact that a tracker Beth recently sent to town to investigate apparently found a clue that pointed to Stillwater Forest.

A few days later, the FBI tracker comes to Nic and Brant’s house. Sage is gone on a visit to her birth family, whom the police have tracked down using her DNA, but Wren is home—and begins screaming when she sees the tracker, Chuck. Chuck is the man who came to her cabin, and she is terrified that he has now come to take her away from the Gideons. Nic explains who he is and promises Wren that he will not hurt her. Chuck reveals that Brant’s brother, Davis, is involved in whatever has happened to Hannah and that he originally found the cabin by following a trail behind Davis’s house. Davis has been supplying Maggie with the things she needs from town and selling the handmade soaps that Maggie makes. Maggie, Chuck tells them, was once a teacher in town, but she had a mental health crisis and became a recluse after the deaths of her husband and child. The police are on their way to Davis’s house, Chuck says, and there should be some news about Davis, and possibly Hannah, soon.

The police rescue Hannah/Evie from Davis’s house and arrest Davis. She is essentially unscathed, having spent her time locked up at Davis’s watching television and playing with new toys that he bought her. Nic and Brant are overjoyed to see their child again, but they realize that to her they are complete strangers and that they will need to introduce themselves into her life slowly. They learn that over time, Maggie let enough details about Evie slip that Davis was able to piece together the child’s real identity. He devised a plan to make Evie ill enough to require outside medical care and then killed Maggie and kidnapped Evie so that he could extort money from Brant. Brant severs all ties with Davis. Once DNA officially confirms that Evie is Hannah, Nic and Brant take her to live in their home and begin the long process of helping her adjust to her new life and new identity. They also formally adopt Wren, whose birth parents are both deceased.