The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: Buchanan, Tracy. Wall of Silence. Lake Union Publishing, April 1, 2020. Kindle.

In Wall of Silence, a psychological crime novel by Tracy Buchanan, Melissa Byatt believed that the bad times in her life were behind her. Then, she came home to find her husband, Patrick, had been stabbed. Melissa sensed from the beginning that her children — fifteen-year-old twins Lilly and Lewis, and ten-year-old Grace — knew what happened to their father, but they refused to tell her. Melissa did not realize at that time that her children were hiding more than just secrets about their father’s injuries. Her life was about to get much worse.

When Melissa entered her home to see her children standing around their father, who was lying in a pool of blood, she first thought he had slipped and hit his head on a sharp corner of the counter. When she examined him more closely, she discovered a stab wound in his stomach. The children told Melissa they had come in from walking the dog to find him like that. She sensed at the time they were lying. Her suspicions were even stronger when the knife that had been lying on the floor, obviously the one used in the stabbing, disappeared while Melissa was gone to let the paramedics in the house.

At the hospital, Patrick was placed in a medically induced coma to allow his brain to heal. Meanwhile, rumors began to fly around the village of Forest Grove as to what might have happened to him. Suspicions pointed toward Ryan Day, a forest ranger with whom Melissa had been friends before she met Patrick. It was believed that Ryan and Melissa had some sort of affair after she married Patrick, about the time that Patrick and Melissa’s oldest son, Joel, died.

Joel was born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a progressive disease from which he had not been expected to live past the age of 26. Joel died much younger. Stressed from caring for her young twins as well as dealing with the grief from Joel’s death, Melissa had disappeared into the woods for about a week after Joel’s funeral. When detectives found out about this disappearance, they asked Melissa why she had stayed with Ryan after Joel died. Melissa explained she had tried to commit suicide to escape the grief and guilt she was feeling. She said that Ryan and Debbie Lampard, a nurse, had spent that week helping Melissa put herself back together so that Patrick and the children would not suspect what happened.

When Patrick was finally awakened from his coma, he accused his youngest daughter, Grace of having stabbed him. He claimed they argued when she unintentionally broke an heirloom watch. Grace told her mother she did not hurt her father, but went willingly to be questioned by police and then later to a home for juvenile delinquents. While Melissa was visiting with Grace at the home, Grace commented that maybe if she had gotten to live with Ryan, she would not have wound up in the situation she was in. Grace explained that Patrick had told her that she was Ryan’s child.

More information about Patrick’s past began to come out as villagers took sides in the incident. Some remembered the wild lock-ins at the local pub during which Patrick had slept with many women from the village. Others accused Melissa of cheating on Patrick with Ryan. Lilly tried to hang herself in the midst of the fighting. Doctors believed she had suffered a psychotic break from all the stress.

Melissa went to Ryan when she discovered Daphne, his ex-wife and her best friend, had also had an affair with Patrick. Ryan said he had promised Daphne he would not tell anyone. His daughter, Maddy, spoke up when Melissa asked when Daphne and Patrick had the affair. Melissa recognized for the first time how much Maddy looked like her children, and knew that she was Patrick’s child. Ryan said that Patrick had confronted him because he thought Grace was Ryan’s daughter. Ryan had sworn she was not, but Patrick had not believed him.

Melissa asked Maddy if Lilly had said anything about hurting Patrick. Maddy suggested there was a suicide note that had not been found. Melissa went back to the tree where Lilly had been found a discovered a note that stated Lilly had stabbed Patrick because she was afraid he would hurt Grace like he hurt Joel. Melissa next visited Debbie, the nurse who had been called to check Joel the day he died. Debbie said she had always suspected something sinister in Joel’s death because he had been so cold, almost as if he had been left outside.

Melissa returned to the hospital to confront Patrick. Patrick would not tell the truth, but Lilly who had come to his hospital room from hers, told the story of how Joel had a tantrum when they went for a walk. Instead of calming Joel, like Melissa would have been able to do, Patrick got angry with Joel and left him, a boy in a wheelchair, outside in the cold. Joel had died of hypothermia when his grandfather learned what had happened and went looking for him. Lilly said that their father had told them at the time that Joel was “dead wood” (361) that needed to be cut out. He had said the same thing about Grace right before Lilly stabbed him.

Patrick went to jail for manslaughter for his role in Joel’s death. Grace was released, and Lilly was not charged because Patrick lied and claimed he stabbed himself. Meanwhile, Melissa and her children made a new life for themselves in a beach village. The last scene of the novel describes Ryan, Melissa, Lilly, Lewis, Maddy, and Grace enjoying a day at the beach together as a family.