Jo Wright

Jo, the novel's first perspective character, grew up in West Mills and has returned to life there after spending her adulthood in New York City in order to marry her old sweetheart, Lymp Seymore. Often described as a "busybody" by the people who know her, Jo is fiercely independent, perceptive, and curious. When she returns from a trip to New York to learn that her fiancée is suspected of a murder he did not commit, she puts these personality traits to work and begins tirelessly pursuing answers in the murder case.

Although Jo advocates fiercely for her fiancée and is eager to prove his innocence, there is also a sense in which her desire to confirm that innocence grows from a place of distrust and fear; Jo has been mistreated and abandoned by many of her previous partners and frets that Lymp might have been...