The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: McGinnis, Mindy. A Long Stretch of Bad Days. HarperCollins. 2023. Kindle.

The novel’s main character, Lydia Chass, narrates the story in first-person present. Lydia Chass lives in a small, rural town called Henley. She comes from one of the wealthiest families. Her father is a lawyer, but lately he has run into financial troubles because he has made a career of defending local criminals who are despised by his neighbors, and this has caused him to slowly lose clients. Lydia is a high-achieving senior with dreams of attending an Ivy League school, so she is infuriated when the new guidance counselor and principal inform her that the old guidance counselor made a mistake with her class schedule. Lydia is missing a history credit, and she cannot graduate without it. Lydia starts to get angry, but they promise her that she can do an independent project to make up the credit. Since she already has a podcast—On the Ground in Flyover Country—full of slice-of-life reporting that she used to pad her college applications, Lydia decides to turn it into a more nuanced dive into the history of her town so that she can better impress the college admissions boards and get into an excellent journalism school. When she learns that the most rebellious girl in school, Bristal Jamison, is also missing a history credit, Lydia urges her to join the podcast in the hopes that she can add a gritty element to her podcast. Bristal agrees, and Lydia decides that they should focus their attention on “the long stretch of bad days,” which was a week in 1994 when Henley was hit by a tornado and a flash flood, plus an old man was murdered in his trailer.

Lydia and Bristal begin their research for the podcast. They discover an old video featuring Bristal’s uncle. He has bruises on his face in the video, and he says he was hit by a brick during the tornado. Lydia goes home and talks to her mother about the week. She learns that her mother’s old friend, Bailey, was the daughter of the sheriff, and that Bailey had taken all 911 calls from her house after the station was destroyed in the tornado. The next day, Lydia goes to a blood drive she organized, but spends most of her time reading through old papers. She finds an old newspaper that reports three people were missing after the storm on the 15th of June. However, on the 16th of June, the same paper reported that the last two missing people had been accounted for.

Lydia and Bristal schedule a meeting with Bailey, who tells them all about what it was like to take 911 calls that week. She tells them she kept a notebook to keep track of everything, and Lydia asks her if she can look through it. Bristal reveals that her cousin, Larry, found the body of Randall Boggs. Larry and his friend, Dale, had heard rumors that Boggs had a family treasure, and that he had an “Indian Princess” in his bloodline. When Larry and Dale noticed that Boggs had not been around for a few days, they assumed he had died in the tornado, and they wanted to go look for his treasure. However, when they discovered he had been beaten to death, they left and called the police.

Bailey sends Lydia pictures of her old notebook. Lydia looks through the old list of missing people and finds five names not crossed off. Four of them had been discovered dead after the tornado, but a fifth one, Denise Halverson, was a mystery to Lydia. Lydia and Bristal meet with the journalist who covered the week, Davind Swinton. They ask him about Denise Halverson, and he tells them that Denise had been the foster child of the Hendrixes. She had run away a few days before the tornado, and she had turned 18 a few weeks later, so there were no grounds for an investigation.

The girls post their first episode, and the town gets angry at them. Lydia’s parents insist that she let them listen first before posting anything else. Lydia goes to visit Erin Hendrix and learns that the only thing Denise took when she ran away was a shirt with blue flowers on it. Lydia and Bristal find an old picture that shows Lydia’s parents and Bristal’s uncle smoking cigarettes together. However, they soon realize that it is not Lydia’s mother in the picture—but Denise Halverson.

The girls drive to jail to visit Bristal’s uncle, Larry, who is in jail for aggravated assault on his ex-girlfriend. Lydia accuses him of killing Dover, and he reveals that her father is his lawyer. When they leave, Bristal and Lydia get into a huge fight, and Lydia leaves her in the parking lot.

Lydia’s mom tells her that Denise is alive, and that she reached out through Facebook. Lydia feels bad, so she goes to Bristal’s house to apologize. Bristal forgives her, and the girls talk to Bristal’s mom, who reveals that Boggs once tried to pay her with a rare coin. She also reveals that Lydia’s father and Larry were best friends as children. One night, they got in a car accident, and Larry switched places with Lydia’s father so he would take the blame and go to juvenile hall. Ever since, he has been blackmailing her dad into being his lawyer.

Lydia interviews the woman who runs the dog pound, Linda. Lydia notices some photoshopped flyers and realizes that Denise’s Facebook page is a fake one. She calls Bristal and tells her she thinks Denise was murdered, so they go out to the place where Linda said dogs had been barking on the day of the murder. They dig and find the body of Denise. Before they can call the police, Lydia’s father arrives with a gun and tries to shoot Bristal to cover up the fact that he helped Larry kill Denise after Larry robbed and killed Boggs. Lydia gets the gun from her father and shoots him in the shoulder. He goes to prison, and the girls release a podcast. Lydia goes off to college, and she leaves the podcast to Bristal, who promises to come visit Lydia at Columbia.