The Lovely Bones is a novel which tells the story of Susie Salmon, a fourteen-year-old girl murdered in the early 1970s. After her death, Susie watches her loved ones cope with their loss from Heaven, witnessing the detectives try and fail to discover her murderer, her parents marriage fall apart, and her siblings and classmates grow up and move on. Though Susie will never be able to rejoin the living, watching over them enables her, and those she left behind, to eventually find peace.
Susie’s heaven is much like a high school, both in architecture and the activities. Everyone “lives” in their own version of heaven and meet when their versions overlap.
Susie meets her roommate, Holly, who is implied to be Vietnamese-American.
Franny is Susie’s intake counselor. She helps the girls adjust to the afterlife. She tells the girls they can have whatever they desire in heaven. Susie’s heaven begins to look more and more like her hometown.
Detective Fenerman tells Susie’s father they have only found a body part. Susie watches her parents mourn.
Lindsey, Susie’s sister, asks to know what part was found. Susie’s dad tells her the Gilbert’s dog found her elbow. Lindsey vomits.
The police search the cornfield, and find where the dug-out has been filled with dirt. Susie watches all this, but cannot tell them where her body is.
The police find her book and notes. They also find a love letter from Ray Singh, the first and only boy Susie kissed. Ray becomes the first suspect, but is quickly ruled out. However, gossip spreads about him at school and he is shunned.
The police bring her hat to the Salmons and tell them she was gagged with the hat. This evidence and the large amount of blood found lead the police to believe she has been murdered.
Susie worries about Lindsey as she returns to school. Lindsey is very distant to the people who reach out to her. She says she will not break and turns to exercise to deal with her pain and rage.
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