Content Warning: The source text contains a graphic description of murder, as well as instances of substance use disorder and sexuality.

Amanda Pierce dies in the first pages of the book, in a hammer attack by the teenage son of one of her extramarital lovers. Unlike the novel’s other characters, she is never described by the omniscient narrator and does not appear in flashbacks, only in the memories and spoken accounts of the other characters. These secondhand portraits, however, are fairly consistent. Amanda was a physically attractive woman in her twenties, with long brown hair, a beautiful smile, and a powerful allure. She and her husband, Robert, lived in Aylesford only for a year, but in that time, she had relationships with two of their neighbors (Larry Harris and Keith Newell) and—by the neighborhood wives’ accounts—attracted the groveling attention of many more. Keith’s wife, Glenda, remembers Amanda’s flirting with all of the men at a neighborhood party while ignoring her husband. Amanda seemed to enjoy taking risks: Her affairs with Larry and Keith were conducted at the same time, a fact that she kept from both of them, and it was Keith’s emails to her, discovered by his son, that led to her murder.