59 pages • 1 hour read
Thief River Falls
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Symbols & Motifs
The Dark Star
Two years before the novel begins, Lisa’s mother was killed in a car accident. A month later, Lisa’s father committed suicide. Then, Lisa’s youngest brother died in his sleep, and her other two younger brothers died attempting to drive across a flooded road. Lisa and Noah refer to that year in their life as the Dark Star. Lisa explains, “You know what an eclipse is, when a shadow blocks out the sun? That year was like an eclipse that erased our entire family” (54). Because of her family’s tragedy, Lisa is a local celebrity in Thief River Falls and the surrounding area: “It wasn’t just because of her books. People knew her because of the Dark Star, too. She was a local celebrity stalked by tragedy” (77). In addition to representing the year that took away Lisa’s family members, the Dark Star represents Lisa’s ongoing grief due to these tragedies. Because of the Dark Star, Noah leaves Lisa for Fargo, unable to handle the grief. Lisa and Noah also can’t bring themselves to do anything with their childhood home: “In the aftermath of the Dark Star that had stolen away their whole family, they’d never taken the time to sell it or rent it. So it sat there, empty, furnished, gathering dust like a museum no one visited” (152). When Lisa believes she has lost Purdue, she hits another all-time low, and even considers committing suicide herself. In that moment, Lisa “cried until she ran out of tears. She had thought the Dark Star that took away her family was the deepest, loneliest galaxy she would ever visit, but somehow, this was even worse” (247).
Later, when Noah returns to Thief River Falls and realizes how bad things have gotten for Lisa, he admits, “I thought I was the curse, that I was the reason they all died” (278). Laurel assures Noah there’s no such thing as a curse, but urges him to help Lisa, explaining, “The Dark Star isn’t finished. It’s trying to take Lisa, too” (279). Even though Lisa and Noah believed the Dark Star only referred to that difficult six-month period in which their family members died, the Dark Star comes to represent the ongoing grief they are both experiencing that threatens to consume them completely. Toward the end of the novel, Lisa ends up hiding out in a local church with a gun, and the police wonder whether to treat her as they would an active shooter. Lisa’s grief has caused her to do extreme things, such as imagine her novel into existence and threaten others with a gun. When Lisa finally accepts that Purdue isn’t real, and her own son is dead, she describes it as “the Dark Star in full eclipse” (299). A week later, Lisa is finally starting to heal from the loss of her son. She realizes she will probably never get over the grief of losing so many family members, but she is starting to move forward from this difficult period in her life.
Thief River Falls
In a metafictional moment, Thief River Falls the title of this book, of Lisa’s successful thriller novel, and of Lisa’s hometown (it is also a real town in northwestern Minnesota). When Lisa is forced to return to Thief River Falls, she is concerned and upset. She explains, “She knew it was wrong to blame the town for everything that had happened to her, but she did. Every house, shop, trail, and intersection was a reminder of what she’d lost” (119). Even though Lisa had a happy childhood, it is hard for her to return to Thief River Falls because it brings back memories of the deaths of her family members. Lisa is a local celebrity in Thief River Falls, due to both her success as an author and the tragedies surrounding her family. Lisa even used real places from Thief River Falls in her novel, which is part of the reason Thief River Falls locals are such a fan of the novel. A waitress tells Lisa, “I love that you used real places around here in the book. Every chapter I would go, ‘Hey! I know right where that is!’” (151). However, the fact that Lisa uses real places from the town in the novel is one of the reasons she ends up struggling to separate the world of the novel from reality.
Another reason Thief River Falls plays a significant role in the novel is because the rural landscape adds to the sense of suspense. The small town, with its brutal northern winters, is surrounded by empty, remote land: “The remote lands offered plenty of places to hide bodes that would never be found” (102). It is also not uncommon in small towns such as Thief River Falls for people to own guns. Lisa grew up learning to shoot and owns a gun herself. And Shyla, a patient of Lisa’s from when Lisa used to work as a nurse, owns several guns. This fact also adds to the sense of danger and suspense that permeates the novel.
The Color White
When Lisa finally arrives in Thief River Falls and begins looking for clues about Purdue’s background, Lisa notices, “White, white, white. Everything was white. It had felt that way in her head for more than a day, but now it was getting worse” (168). This literally describes the snowfall but also symbolically indicates that Lisa’s delusions are becoming more intense. She eventually ends up at the hospital but becomes overwhelmed seeing a man in a hospital bed, laying under white sheets and surrounded by doctors and nurses in white clothing. Lisa starts to have a panic attack:
Something about the sheer volume of whiteness filled her with an inexplicable horror. White was the absence of color. White was the absence of life. The people in the hospital room didn’t look like caregivers, like people who would save you and protect you. Instead, they looked like angels come to collect a body, come to usher you from death to the other side. (239)
Lisa ends up running into an empty room, where she keeps the lights off, “because she didn’t want white light” (239). While archetypally a symbol of innocence, cleanliness, or truth, to Lisa, the color white’s association with hospitals connects it to death and grief.
Once Lisa realizes she has hallucinated many of the people and events of the past two days, she tells Laurel, “Everything in my head made up had something white in it. That was what made it different from the things that were really there. After a while, it seemed like everything became white as I went deeper and deeper. I wonder why” (303). Laurel suspects it is because hospitals contain so much white. Laurel explains, “Lab coats would be my guess. Masks. I suspect that to your brain, white became the color of doctors. You began to associate white with the hospital. This is where you lost Harlan. Everything your mind invented was taking you right back here” (303). In the novel, when Lisa starts to see a lot of white, it is a clue that some of what she is seeing is not real. One early example of this is the white alligator. Purdue tells Lisa he saw a white alligator shoot a man the night before. Later, Lisa shakes hands with Deputy Garrett and notices he has a tattoo of a white alligator on the back of his hand. Lisa describes the tattoo: “A snow-white, albino alligator, its mouth open, showing long teeth, its eyes black and beady, full of violence” (102). To Lisa, this is proof she can’t trust Deputy Garrett, even though Purdue is entirely made up in Lisa’s head.
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