Summary:
Susie Salmon is recounting how she was murdered on December 6th, 1973. She was walking home from school in the cornfields when a man from her neighbourhood, Mr.Harvey, invites her to see the shelter/secret underground den he’s built. He then rapes and kills her. She was fourteen.
Susie has her own heaven which is linked to people with similar heavens. She makes a friend, Holly, and they share a house together. Another person there, Franny, acts as a counsellor to help them cope with being dead.
On Earth the police find an elbow, Susie’s class notes and her reading book. They then find her hat, which was used to gag her, and a large amount of blood. They declare her dead and Susie’s sister, Lindsey tries to cope by shutting off her emotions and going back to school.
The police at first suspect Ray Singh, a boy who had a crush on Susie and wrote her a love note. However, he has an alibi.
When Susie’s spirit was leaving Earth she touched a girl, Ruth, who went to her school. That night Ruth had a dream about a pale female ghost running across the field before people knew of Susie’s death.
Lindsey sneaks into Susie’s room and finds a photo of their mother Susie once took. Susie wanted to be a nature photographer when she grew up. When she was eleven she got a camera for her birthday and snuck up on her mother, Abigail, sat in the garden, taking a picture. In that moment she saw an expression she’s never seen before on her, making her a stranger. Lindsey looks at this photo and also feels this way.
Susie watches as her father, Jack, destroys all the boats in bottles he’s made, ones she’d help raise the sails of. He then breaks down sobbing in her room and is comforted by her little brother Buckley.
Mr.Harvey had killed before so was efficient at it. He collapsed the hideout where he killed Susie and cut her body up (although he did forget an elbow). He dumped her body in a sinkhole eight miles away. He put the bag with her body inside a metal safe and paid the Flanagans to dump it in the sinkhole, who never suspected what was inside. He only keeps a Pennsylvania keystone from her charm bracelet, and the knife he killed her with, still stained with her blood.
Two days before Christmas Jack sees Mr.Harvey building a tent in his back garden and suddenly begins to suspect him. He tells the police his suspicions. When the investigator, Len Fenerman, questions Mr.Harvey he lies and says the tent is something he does every year in memory of his wife Leah. He usually does it in the basement but this year decided to do it outside. When Len reports this to Jack, Jack recalls he’d previously heard Mr.Harvey’s wife had been called Sophie.
On Christmas Day a boy, Samuel Heckler, comes to give Lindsey a gift. Jack tells Buckley, who is only four and keeps asking where Susie is, that she’s dead. Lindsey’s gift is half a heart. She kisses Samuel.
Two weeks before Susie died she was late for school and snuck through the back entrance to avoid getting in trouble. Ray was there and they skip English class together, hiding up on the scaffolding of the school’s stage. They overhear Ruth being chastised by teachers for drawing breasts on her artwork to make it more realistic. When the teachers leave Susie climbs down and talks to Ruth, looking at her other drawings and telling her they’re really good. Later that week Ray kissed Susie by her locker.
After Susie’s death Ruth would walk on the cornfield each morning before school. Ray notices this and talks to her one day, saying he was also there the day she and Susie talked. It becomes a new ritual for them to meet and talk there.
Jack goes to Ray’s house to talk to him, but first talks to his mother Ruana, and tells her who he thinks killed Susie. Ruana says if she was in his shoes she would tell as few people as possible and instead find a way to kill him herself.
Len Fenerman waits with Abigail for Jack to come home. Len’s wife died shortly after they were married. In his wallet he keeps all the photos of the murder cases and writes the dates they were solved on the back. His wife’s and Susie’s remain blank.
Buckley tells his friend Nate he’s seen Susie. They go into her room and find a twig Buckley once choked on. Susie saved his life by driving him to the hospital. Susie wonders whether Buckley really can see her.
Mr.Harvey dreams of the day his father forced his mother out of their car and she ran off, never to return. She left him her necklace.
Grandma Lynn, Abigail’s mother, comes to stay for the memorial service. She forces Abigail into a makeover and Lindsey asks for one. She brings some light back into their life. Grandma Lynn helps Lindsey find a dress from Susie’s room to wear. Earlier Lindsey overheard Grandma Lynn and Abigail talking about Jack being convinced a man killed Susie. Lindsey asks Grandma Lynn who the man is but she brushes her off.
Samuel meets Lindsey at the church, Ruth comes with her father. Clarissa, Susie’s friend, comes with her boyfriend Brian Nelson. Ray doesn’t go, instead he looks at a photo of Susie she’d given him. Mr. Harvey comes into the church during the final hymn and Grandma Lynn points him out to Lindsey as the man. Lindsey meets his eyes and passes out, Mr. Harvey slips away.
Lindsey goes to a summer camp for smart, gifted kids. Samuel and Ruth are there too. Lindsey longs to have sex so she can feel like a woman. Ruth writes in her diary she wishes to have sex with other women.
Susie wonders why she doesn’t see her dead grandparents in heaven. Franny explains it’s because she can’t let go of what’s happening on Earth.
Ruth visits Lindsey at night and tells her she dreamed of Susie. Lindsey confesses she missies Susie more than anyone will ever know.
The final competition for the camp is ‘How to get away with the perfect murder’. Artie, a boy who’d had a crush on Susie, tries to warn Lindsey about it. Ruth talks to Artie about Susie and how they found out about her death. Lindsey has sex with Samuel at aged fourteen.
Mr. Harvey remembers his previous victims, looking at the trophies he kept from them. One was called Claire, a girl younger than Susie, he convinced to enter the back of his van. He took her shoes off and pried the heel off with a penknife. Voices outside the van demanded to know what he was doing, He opened the van and told them he was just trying to fix her shoes, fooling everyone. He kept the heel as a trophy. He used to kill animals to try and stop himself killing children. The animal bones are hidden in his basement walls.
Detective Len visits the family and tells Jack he has to stop ringing about George Harvey. Lindsey overhears and accuses him of giving up.
Late at night Jack sees a light heading towards the field. He follows it with a baseball bat, convinced it’s Mr. Harvey. He finds Clarissa, startled. Her boyfriend Brian briefly sees Mr. Harvey but doesn’t realise it. He hears Clarissa’s screams and hits Jack, taking the baseball bat and hitting him more.
Jack has to have a knee replacement operation. Abigail tells Lindsey to stay out of it but she gets a lift from Samuel’s older brother Hal to go see Jack in the hospital. Meanwhile Abigail drove to the hospital but called Len to meet her at the nurse’s station. They go out for a smoke and she asks him how his wife died. He says it was suicide. Abigail tells him she’s ready to accept her daughter’s murder now and kisses him.
Lindsey returns to school in the fall with her labelled as the murdered girl’s sister and daughter of a nutcase.
Two weeks before Thanksgiving Jack discovers Lindsey shaving her legs for the first time. She asks if he still thinks Mr. Harvey killed Susie and he says yes. She asks why the police haven’t done anything and he explains there’s a lack of evidence. Lindsey realises they need to break into Mr. Harvey’s house and find something that connects him to Susie.
Grandma Lynn arrives just before Thanksgiving and asks to go on a walk alone with Abigail. She tells her to stop having an affair. Abigail feigns ignorance and walks away, sharing a cigarette with Ruana in her garden. Grandma Lynn decides to let Abigail have the key to her father’s cabin like she asked after walking past Mr. Harvey’s house and sensing evil.
Lindsey breaks into Mr. Harvey’s house. Susie follows her movements, sensing the presence of his other victims there: Jackie Meyer 1967, 13. Flora Hernandez 1963, 8. Leah Fox 1969, 12. Sophie Cichetti 1960, 49. Leidia Johnson 1960, 6. Wendy Richter 1971, 13. Lindsey discovers Mr. Harvey’s sketchbook with a drawing of the sink den he killed Susie in. She hears him return home, rips out the page and smashes the bedroom window to escape. Mr. Harvey catches a glimpse of her soccer shirt as she flees.
She runs home where Samuel and her family are waiting, wondering where she is. She tells them what she did and gives the page to Jack. Abigail refuses to take part and leaves to pick up Buckley. Lindsey says she thinks Mr. Harvey saw her.
In her heaven Susie meets the other victims of Mr. Harvey and feels her pain ease a little at being able to share their stories with each other.
Mr. Harvey recalls how he and his mother used to steal things, sometimes from shops, sometimes from graves. One night they were sleeping in their truck, too far away from his father to return in one day, when three men start banging against it, wanting to rape his mother. She runs one over and then reverses over him.
After Mr. Harvey sees Lindsey fleeing his house he hides the knife and trophies from the murders (except Susie’s, which he keeps) down a hole drilled through the foundation in the basement. He then calls the police. He convinces them the drawing was him trying to puzzle out the murder himself, but hadn’t bothered the police with it because he was an amateur.
During this Abigail meets Len at the mall and they have sex. Mr. Harvey packs his belongings and leaves his house forever.
On the anniversary of Susie’s death Ruth visits Ray’s house. She remembers the time she and Ray tried kissing but had felt nothing for each other. She said they could try again and each imagine the other was Susie. In the present they kiss for a bit before going to the cornfield with candles. Slowly other people from the neighbourhood arrive to pay their respects. Jack, Lindsey and Buckley join them but Abigail refuses.
In the summer of 1975 Abigail leaves to go to her father’s cabin. Four months later Grandma Lynn comes to live with Jack and the family in order to help.
A year after Mr. Harvey’s disappearance Lindsey asks Hal to take her to the police station, to find out what they’re doing to find him. There she sees Abigail’s scarf on Len’s desk and realises the truth about their affair.
When Buckley is seven he builds a fort in the back garden like he always planned to with Susie. He misses her, but refuses to miss his mum.
Len looks through the evidence of Susie’s case. They found the animal bones in Mr. Harvey’s house and the bloodstain in the garage. The field was dug up again and they found a coke bottle with Mr. Harvey’s and Susie’s fingerprints on. Len knows he let a murderer get away and that Jack was right all along. He takes the photos of his unsolved cases out of his wallet and writes ‘gone’ on the back, then puts them in Susie’s evidence box.
In September 10th 1976 a hunter finds Susie’s charm next to the partially dug up ground. It’s exposing bones of a child’s foot.
Abigail spent one winter at her father’s cabin then travelled to California, finding work and trying to process her grief.
At seventeen Ray moves to Penn for college. Ruth moves to New York. She’s convinced she has a sixth sense and walks around trying to prove it.
In December 1981 Len is contacted by a detective in Delaware about finding Susie’s charm and a body. They ask for Susie’s dental records.
Meanwhile Hal has been trying to find George Harvey for eight years. He meets Ralph Cichetti, the son of Sophie, one of Mr. Harvey’s victims. The murder seems too different to be connected until Ralph mentions the man made dollhouses. Hal contacts Len about it.
Years pass and Holiday, the family dog dies, joining Susie in heaven.
At twenty-one Lindsey and Samuel graduate college. They’re returning home on a motorcycle when caught in a thunderstorm and seek shelter in a nearby abandoned house. Samuel falls in love with it. He proposes to Lindsey and she says yes. They run home to tell her family and while they celebrate a twelve-year-old Buckley catches a glimpse of Susie watching.
Ruth is still in New York, walking and discovering places people have died and recording it in her journal. People in heaven find her fascinating. She learns from her father the sinkhole is being filled in and wants to see it before that happens.
Buckley has taken to gardening and finds a box of old clothes to use to stake his tomatoes. Jack realises they’re Susie’s clothes and stops him. They argue saying Jack needs to choose between the living and dead. Jack has a heart attack and is taken to hospital.
Lynn rings Abigail to tell her of Jack’s heart attack and Abigail flies back. Lindsey, Samuel and Buckley meet her at the airport. Buckley is full of hate for her. She sees Jack and starts crying while he smiles, glad she came. They talk about Susie and she asks how he can stand staying there and be reminded every day. He asks if moving stopped that and she admits it hadn’t. She realises how much she still loves him and promises to stay for a while. Len visits Jack at the hospital and gives them Susie’s charm, saying it was found near another victim of Mr. Harvey.
Ray and Ruth visit the sinkhole to see it has expanded and the Flanagan’s house nearby is now abandoned. Ruth wonders about what happened to Susie’s body. Ray enters the house while Ruth stays near the sinkhole. She finally sees Susie next to her, standing where Mr. Harvey dumped her body, and Ruth asks if there’s anything she wants.
Mr. Harvey visits his old neighbourhood, spying on his old house, then on Lindsey in the Salmon house. A cop says a suspicious vehicle was reported and asks him to move along. No one recognises him.
He goes to the sinkhole where Ruth is by the car as Ray picks wildflowers for his mum. Susie panics and dives from heaven into Ruth. Mr. Harvey passes by unnoticed.
Susie is in Ruth’s body thanks to Ruth’s wish. They switch and Ruth is temporarily in heaven meeting/lecturing people. In Ruth’s body Susie asks Ray to kiss her. He senses something is different about her and does. She asks him to drive to Hal’s bike shop, which she knows is empty for the day. She finds the spare key and lets them in.
She says she needs a shower and strips to step in, then beckons Ray to join her. He calls her Susie as he refuses without realising, but when she points this out he joins her, convinced she’s not Ruth anymore, but Susie. They make love in the shower, then the bedroom.
They sleep. When they wake Susie can feel herself slipping away again. She tells Ray to read Ruth’s journals. He goes into the shower. Susie tries to ring her house, Buckley answers but he can’t hear her voice. Ray gets out of the shower and sees Ruth slumped on the desk. When she wakes he knows Susie is gone. Ruth feels more tired and happy than she’s ever been.
They return to Ray’s house to sleep. Ray looks at Ruth’s journal and sees the reports of murders she’s made. His mum Ruana then tells them she’s going to drop a pie off at the Salmon’s and wants them to come. Ruth says she has something to do but will drop by later.
Jack returns home from the hospital with Abigail. Lindsey asks her if she plans to hurt him again. Abigail promises she’ll try not to. Hal and Samuel give a drum set to Buckley as an early thirteenth birthday present to help with his frustrations. Susie can see her family are now seeing beyond her death. They catch Ray and Ruana trying to leave the pie and invite them in.
Meanwhile Ruth is alone in the cornfield, unable to stop being haunted even when Susie’s family are ready to let go.
Susie hears Samuel talking about the house they found and want to buy. Ray says Ruth’s dad owns it. Susie leaves.
Lindsey and Samuel marry and buy the house. Abigail stays with her family, Ray becomes a doctor that believes in the supernatural, remembering that day with Susie. Ruth moved back to New York, still trying to prove she could communicate with the dead.
Susie is scanning Earth with her grandfather when she sees Mr. Harvey get off a bus. He goes into a diner then notices a teenage girl and follows her to the back of the bus station. She finds him creepy and leaves while Susie notices the large icicles above him. One falls and pitches him forward. It would be weeks before the snow in the ravine melted enough to uncover him.
Lindsey becomes a therapist and she and Samuel have a daughter: Abigail Suzanne, little Susie.
Scribbled Thoughts 