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At the beginning of the novel, Laura is presented as an ordinary middle-aged woman working as a speech pathologist and living in Belle Isle, Georgia. Her friends and family know her as a polite, law-abiding woman who pays her taxes on time and lives a comfortable if mundane life. The violent incident in the diner, however, reveals a different side of Laura. While others cower and run, Laura bravely and calmly confronts the shooter, skillfully disarming and killing him. After being treated in the hospital, other aspects of her personality emerge that surprise her loved ones, including her aggression towards the police, apparent familiarity with criminals, and a habit of smoking. Her daughter Andy struggles to reconcile the mother she knows with the cold and efficient combatant she sees in the hospital, and indeed, the complexity of Laura’s multifaceted identity speaks to the difficultly of truly knowing another person, one of the central themes of the novel. Flashbacks to the past reveal that Laura was originally named Jane Queller, the gifted but troubled daughter of a Martin Queller, CEO of QuellCorp. Sections of the novel set in the 1980s trail Jane’s development from a meek young woman who is dominated by her abusive father and her equally abusive boyfriend, to a brave individual who is willing to fight for herself and her loved ones.
