43 pages • 1 hour read
Tarryn FisherThe Wrong Family
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Juno Holland
Content Warning: This section of the guide references substance use disorders, sexual misconduct, houselessness, and kidnapping.
Juno, a protagonist and one of the two point-of-view characters, is a 67-year-old woman with severe lupus who secretly moves into the Crouches’ home to avoid spending the winter months on the street. Juno’s physical condition is very poor; she has dizzy spells and frequently falls. Nevertheless, she quickly becomes engrossed in the family and tries to untangle a mystery surrounding their son, Samuel.
Because the novel initially encourages readers to assume Juno is living in the apartment that the Crouches added to their home, the unreliability of Juno’s perspective emerges only slowly. This allows readers time to sympathize with her before the full extent of her dubious ethics become clear. In reality, Juno was unhoused and living in the park across the street from the Crouches’ house because of decisions she made while working as a therapist in Albuquerque—specifically her romantic relationship with one of her clients, Chad Allen. The affair violated the law and her licensing requirements, and she served time in prison. Her husband, Kregger, left her, taking his two children from a previous marriage with him.
Juno’s backstory hinges on the same trait that motivates her in the narrative present: a tendency to get involved in other people’s business beyond the bounds of curiosity. This is what drives her to attempt to learn the Crouch family’s secrets by eavesdropping on the Crouches’ conversations and going through their personal effects. She ultimately concludes that Winnie kidnapped Samuel from her client, Josalyn Russel, to raise him as her own. Not content to remain in The Role of the Observer, Juno intervenes by sending an email to the woman she thinks is Samuel’s biological grandmother, alerting her to Samuel’s whereabouts and her discoveries. This destructive pattern of voyeurism contributes to the violence of the novel’s climax, though Juno attempts to atone for her mistakes by killing Dakota.
Winnie Crouch
As one of the two protagonists and point-of-view characters, Winnie seems to have it all: a beautiful home, a devoted husband, and a well-behaved teenage son. However, while she works hard to maintain The Illusion of Perfection, it is clear that all is not as it seems. Winnie and her husband, Nigel, fight frequently, and she also has a challenging relationship with her son. In her efforts to be a perfect mother, she engages in power struggles with Samuel that boil down to a conflict between the ideal mother/son relationship she envisions and the reality of having a son with his own ideas about how to live his life.
Much of the tension in the Crouch family stems from The Weight of Secrets—specifically, Nigel’s knowledge of the time Winnie kidnapped and accidentally killed the infant of one of her clients at Illuminations. This shared guilt eats away at the couple, and as the novel progresses, Winnie increasingly struggles to trust her husband, frequently wondering if he is the cause of disturbing events such as her receipt of an envelope of news clippings about child abductions.
Although Winnie feels guilt about the kidnapping, she ultimately seems to see herself as more of a victim than Josalyn—a fact that reveals the hollowness of her supposed compassion for those who are unhoused, struggling with substance use disorders, or otherwise less fortunate. In the confusion of the climax, the police do not suspect her of any misdeeds, allowing her to avoid responsibility again. However, the discovery of Dakota and Juno’s bodies in the crawlspace, where the remains of Josalyn’s baby are also hidden, suggests that Winnie may ultimately face repercussions for her actions.
Nigel Crouch
Nigel Crouch is Winnie’s husband and shares her secret about the stolen infant who later died in Winnie’s custody. He buried the infant’s body beneath their house, helping shield Winnie from the consequences of her actions. Despite this prior devotion to his wife, Nigel has grown disillusioned with the relationship as a result of their shared guilt. By the time the novel opens, he and Winnie have a strained relationship and frequently fight. Nigel does not acknowledge their anniversary and frequently sleeps separately in the den. In addition, Nigel is conducting an emotional affair with a woman named Dulce and considers sleeping with her.
Since Winnie banned alcohol from her house because of the alcohol-related death of her father, Nigel must hide his stash of alcohol. Significantly, everyone in the house seems to be aware of his “hidden” Jack Daniels—yet another instance of how superficial the family’s veneer of perfection is. Dakota kills Nigel in the novel’s climax for having turned him out of the house and (possibly) for having cheated on Dakota’s sister.
Samuel Crouch
Samuel, who prefers to be called Sam, is the Crouches’ teenage son and the only person in the house who has met Juno and knows that she exists. While Sam does not know that she is living in the crawl space, he meets her several times in the park to talk about life and share treats that his mother has forbidden, like hot dogs.
Sam feels stifled by his mother’s overprotectiveness and expresses to Juno that he feels he must be adopted, as he doesn’t fit in with his family. While this proves to be a red herring, his discomfort indicates how troubled the family dynamics are just beneath the surface. For example, Sam is aware of his parents’ fighting and also of the Oxycontin in their bathroom, which he at one point steals, revealing the depths of his unhappiness.
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By Tarryn Fisher
