The Quarry Girls: A Thriller

The Quarry Girls, written by Jess Lourey and published in 2022, is a thriller set in 1970s Minnesota. It follows protagonist Heather Cash as she and her friends try to stay alive in Pantown—a town full of secrets, murderers, and underground tunnels. Lourey grew up in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and currently lives in Minneapolis. She is a retired professor of creative writing and sociology and has received multiple awards for her books, including the International Thriller and Minnesota Book Awards. A prolific, multi-genre author who writes everything from children’s books to fantasy to nonfiction, Lourey’s best-known works include Unspeakable Things, which won the 2021 Anthony Award, and Bloodline, which was shortlisted for the 2021 Goodreads Choice awards.

This guide uses the 2022 Thomas & Mercer paperback edition of The Quarry Girls.

Content Warning: This novel and guide discuss rape, child abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional), domestic violence, murder, kidnapping, torture, and death by suicide.

Plot Summary

Heather Cash just wants to drum with The Girls, a three-piece band she is in with Brenda Taft and Maureen Hansen. The three girls live in Pantown, a neighborhood in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Heather cares for her family, including her sister, Junie, because her mother, Constance, is frequently ill. Brenda and Maureen are more interested in boys and makeup than games and playing music, and they seem to be changing much faster than her. Heather is self-conscious about her ear, which her mother set on fire during a mental health crisis, but is otherwise unconcerned about her appearance.

Elizabeth McCain (Beth), a waitress at a diner in St. Cloud, goes missing, and everything begins to change. Beth’s disappearance coincides with the arrival of an outsider in St. Cloud: Theodore Godo, who slicks back his hair and goes by “Ed.” Beth’s story is told from her perspective in interludes that interrupt the main narrative. After a diner shift, Beth is kidnapped by Ed, and he keeps her in a pitch-black cell. He rapes her repeatedly, and Beth concocts a plan to escape. Eventually, she feels a metal object in the dirt and secretly digs it up: a five-inch railroad spike.

One night, while playing freeze tag in the tunnels below Pantown, Heather, Brenda, their friend Claude, and Junie discover Maureen performing oral sex on three older men behind a basement door. One of the men is Pantown’s Sheriff, Jerome Nillson. Heather and Brenda don’t recognize the other men, but Heather sees a copper ID bracelet on one of their wrists. Brenda and Heather decide never to mention what they saw to protect Maureen’s reputation, and in Pantown, people keep their secrets. Privately, Heather tries to discover whose bracelet she saw that night.

After playing their first show at the county fair, The Girls are invited to a party at Dead Man’s Quarry by local teens, Ricky and Ant. Ant and Heather go to a cabin and she is excited for her first kiss, but Ant forces her to take a topless photo. Maureen, who is supposed to be at the party, never shows up. The next morning, Brenda and Heather learn that she never came home. Brenda also has a black eye but won’t talk about it. Heather believes Maureen has disappeared because the men who were molesting her are trying to cover it up. Determined to find her friend alive, Heather digs deeper to find out what happened that night.

Heather’s list of suspects grows as bodies begin to turn up in Pantown. Maureen’s body is found in Dead Man’s Quarry, and though Sheriff Nillson rules it a death by suicide, Heather knows she has been murdered. After Brenda is found dead in the same quarry, Heather begins to realize she can trust no one—not even her father. As she investigates the tunnels underneath her neighborhood, she learns that the basement she saw Maureen being molested in is Sheriff Nillson’s. When she searches his utility closet, she uncovers a folder full of Polaroids featuring minors in various stages of undress. Around the same time, she discovers her mother’s mental health crisis was triggered by her father’s adultery with Maureen’s mother, Gloria. Heather begins to feel alone in her small community, where everyone knows everything and does nothing about it.

Meanwhile, Beth is still missing. Sheriff Nillson and DA Gary Cash—Heather’s father—suspect Ed, whom they believe is also responsible for the recent death of a waitress in St. Paul. Their plan, however, is to convince Ed to leave town, as they are only interested in keeping their own secrets rather than protecting the women of St. Cloud.

When Junie ends up wearing the same gold earrings that both Maureen and Brenda wore before they were murdered, Heather knows she must find answers quickly or her sister will end up dead. A conversation with her mother helps her realize the man with the copper ID bracelet is her father. Reeling but determined to save her sister, she follows Junie out to a cabin at the quarry. She discovers that Ricky and Ant, under Ed’s influence, are responsible for her friends’ deaths.

Beth has been using the spike to loosen the hinges on the door to her cell. When Ed enters, she attacks and kills him. While Ant and Ricky threaten Heather and Junie, Beth appears from under the floorboards covered in Ed’s blood. Heather, Beth, and Junie flee with Ricky in close pursuit, scampering up to the tall cliffs above the quarry. In his attempt to kill Heather, Ricky falls to his death.

In the aftermath, Heather confesses to another agent what she saw and found in Sheriff Nillson’s basement. He and her father are charged, and the tunnels below the town are shut down. A shrine is built to memorialize Maureen and Brenda, and the novel ends on a hopeful note for a new future in Pantown.