56 pages • 1 hour read
Force of Nature
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Chapters 27-35Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 27 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of suicidal ideation and death.
King calls Aaron and Carmen. They learn that Beth and Bree are sticking to their stories; because of how long the body spent outside in the elements, it will be difficult to pin the blame on anyone. King also shares that the remains found at the cabin are not Martin Kovac’s missing victim. The body belonged to a man—likely Sam Kovac. (The incarcerated biker has struck a deal with officers and tells them that Kovac had a reputation for being loose-lipped; the bikers with whom Kovac dealt drugs were approached by an older couple who offered payment if the bikers would kill Kovac. The bikers agreed.) Now, King, Aaron, and Carmen suspect that the parents of Martin Kovac’s missing fourth victim were the ones who approached the bikers, and King admits that they are the prime suspects.
Interlude 26 Summary: “Day 4: Sunday Morning”
Alice hears someone ask her who she is talking to on the phone.
Chapter 28 Summary
Aaron and Carmen sit down to look at a flash drive that King has shared; it is full of crime scene photos. Alice’s body, covered in debris, looks small and vulnerable, and it is obvious that she was exposed to the elements for days. They scour the images, hoping to find a clue as to how she died. In the very last image, Aaron spies a tiny red and silver thread caught in Alice’s jacket zipper. He is sure that he has seen this thread before and realizes that this is the color scheme from Lauren’s missing bracelet, the one that her daughter Rebecca made for her. (Lauren had said that she lost this bracelet on the hike.)
Interlude 27 Summary: “Day 4: Sunday Morning”
Lauren asks Alice who she is talking to on the phone, and Alice responds that it’s a voicemail, something about Margot. Lauren is angry that Alice left the group, taking the phone and the only working flashlight. The two briefly argue, and then Alice suggests that they leave together. Lauren complies, and as she follows, she thinks about her first meeting with Alice. They’d been doing a trust-fall activity together at their adventure high school. Alice had let Lauren go, and Lauren broke her wrist.
Chapter 29 Summary
Aaron and Carmen check the missing persons flyer to see if Lauren was wearing the bracelet on the hike. She was. The two head off to search for her.
Interlude 28 Summary: “Day 4: Sunday Morning”
Alice and Lauren begin to argue. Lauren accuses Alice of being selfish, and Alice tries to explain that she is leaving because she needs to help her daughter. Lauren then accuses Margot of being part of the bullying ring that targeted Rebecca. She also notes Alice’s large donations to the school and insinuates that Alice bought Margot’s way out of suspension or expulsion. Alice does not deny this. She in turn accuses Lauren of raising an overly passive child because of her own passivity, declaring that Lauren has set a terrible example for her daughter. When Lauren points out that Margot is malicious and manipulative, Lauren tells her that those qualities, while not admirable, often help people to succeed.
Chapter 30 Summary
Aaron finds Lauren alone on the Mirror Falls trail, sitting by the waterfall.
Interlude 29 Summary: “Day 4: Sunday Morning”
Angrily, Lauren shoves Alice. A scuffle ensues, and Alice ends up on the ground, breathing shallowly. Lauren wonders if Alice has hit her head, but Alice is clearly alive, so Lauren decides to return to the cabin. There, she continues to wonder about Alice’s condition, feeling first anger, then guilt. Then, with a chill, Lauren realizes that she is no longer wearing the friendship bracelet; she wonders if it got snagged on Alice’s clothing.
Chapter 31 Summary
In the present, Lauren asks if Alice is really dead. She tells Aaron that she had gone back to look for Alice when she woke up, but Alice was gone, so Lauren had assumed that Alice had gotten up and walked out, as planned.
Interlude 30 Summary: “Day 4: Sunday Morning”
Bree wakes early. She walks down the trail and finds Alice. At first, she thinks that Alice is alive. Alice’s phone is ringing, and Bree wonders why Alice has not answered it. The call fails, and Bree realizes that Alice is dead. She finds a heavy flashlight near the body. Bree assumes that Beth snuck out and killed Alice as retribution for Alice’s bullying, so she throws the flashlight as far as she can into the bush and moves the body further from the trail.
Chapter 32 Summary
Lauren seems poised to jump off the falls. Aaron tells her that she still has an obligation to parent Rebecca, and Lauren angrily tells him that she has done nothing but fail her daughter, time and time again.
Interlude 31 Summary: “Day 4: Sunday Morning”
Bree returns to the cabin with a snakebite. They realize that Alice is gone, and Lauren goes to look for her. She is not on the trail where Lauren left her. Lauren assumes that Alice got up and walked away. She returns to the cabin and does not tell anyone about her altercation with Alice the night before. They decide to head north to try to make it to the road, just as Alice had wanted them to.
Chapter 33 Summary
Now, standing on the edge of the waterfall, Lauren tells Aaron that she didn’t mean to kill Alice, but that does admit she had wanted to hurt her. She explains about Alice’s unwavering support for Margot, even when Margot bullied Rebecca. She explains that she feels guilty for having killed Alice and for having been a bad mother. She jumps over the edge.
Interlude 32 Summary: “Day 4: Sunday Morning”
The women are all angry at Alice, so instead of looking for her more thoroughly, they leave.
Chapter 34 Summary
Aaron jumps after Lauren, knowing that the falls might pull her under and that being in the water nearby is the only way to save her. Although it is a struggle, he and the officers gathered on the bank manage to get Lauren out of the water alive. Carmen kisses Aaron, explaining that she isn’t hitting on him; she is just thrilled that he didn’t die while trying to save Lauren.
Chapter 35 Summary
Both Lauren and Bree face charges in Alice’s death and the removal of her body from the crime scene. Because Beth never trusted Alice, she had made copies of all of Alice’s data requests, so she can provide Aaron and Carmen with the contracts that Alice had promised them. Daniel is involved in a very public scandal about his son’s alleged circulation of explicit images of his ex-girlfriend. Margot’s name has so far been kept out of the media coverage. Aaron has put up several framed photographs of his father and has finally purchased new furniture. He plans to attend Carmen’s wedding in Sydney.
Chapters 27-35 Analysis
As Aaron and Carmen contemplate crime-scene photos of Alice’s body, Harper uses this scene as a key moment of symbolism to convey the dangerous setting of the Australian bush. It was several days before Alice’s body was discovered, and Aaron’s observations of her corpse convey the distinct sense that a single human form can be easily lost in this space, As the narrative states, “The bushland had washed over Alice like a wave. Leaves and twigs and bits of rubbish clung to her hair and in the creases of her clothing. A decrepit piece of plastic wrapping that looked like it had traveled a long way was wedged underneath her leg” (282). As pieces of the wild Australian bush cover Alice’s body, the description implicitly compares the landscape to the vastness of the ocean: a place that heaves and buckles of its own volition, swallowing everything that comes within its grasp.
Yet against this natural backdrop of treacherous terrain, the novel’s human interactions take center stage and prove to be the greater threat. Specifically, Alice’s relationship with Lauren becomes a key focal point as their surface-level equanimity suddenly devolves into violence, revealing the long history of tension, injustice, and resentments festering beneath the surface. Just as Alice bullied Lauren when they were young, her daughter Margot now bullies Lauren’s daughter, Rebecca, and this dark history between the two women’s families overshadows their interactions on the trail. Although Lauren initially shows herself willing to overlook Alice’s past transgressions, she cannot forgive Alice’s role in Rebecca’s experiences with bullying, nor can she overlook Alice’s decision to pay money to the school to allow Margot to escape punishment. Although Alice and Daniel have thus far been the primary exemplars of The Extremity of Parents’ Protective Instincts, Lauren now goes to great lengths to protect her child. Although she does not mean to kill Alice, she does assault her as an act of revenge.
As the novel ends, Beth continues to figure as one of the narrative’s moral centers, despite her past. She finishes the work that Alice started, helping Aaron and Carmen seal their case against Bailey Tennant. Her aid also demonstrates her sense of personal ethics, for like Aaron and Carmen, she believes that white-collar crime merits prosecution. She has seen firsthand the unethical behavior that characterized many of the employee interactions at Bailey Tennant, and she does everything in her power to put a stop to the company’s financial crimes. Her actions suggest that individuals can redeem themselves and gain a second chance.
Significantly, Aaron’s personal interactions reveal that he also gets a second chance of sorts. As the novel ends, he has come to terms with his father’s death and is now at peace with their complicated relationship. By displaying photographs of his father rather than hiding them, he actively honors his father’s memory, and his decision to purchase new furniture and attend Carmen’s wedding shows that he is now poised to reenter a world in which social interactions matter as much as his work does. He and Carmen have struck up a meaningful friendship, and Aaron is far more emotionally stable than he was at the novel’s beginning.
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By Jane Harper
