Presumed Guilty

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, racism, substance use, addiction, physical abuse, sexual content, illness, mental illness, and suicidal ideation.

Rusty Sabich is the text’s protagonist and narrator. Rusty is a retired prosecutor and judge who is 77 years old. Rusty moved to Skageon to heal from the ordeal of being wrongly imprisoned for his late wife’s murder in Kindle County. Rusty lives on Mirror Lake and appreciates the idyllic, solitary beauty of rural Skageon. Rusty absorbs the country look, wearing his hair long and growing a beard. Knowing some people still believe in his guilt, Rusty avoids unnecessary confrontation by predicting what people want to hear and tailoring his tone and responses to each person. Rusty’s closest friend in Skageon is Mansy Potter, who helped him with work and his social life after prison.

Rusty is intelligent and quick, though he doubts his lawyerly skills after so long away from the courtroom stage. By the end of his opening statement, Rusty feels rejuvenated from “making full use of everything I have as a human” (214). Rusty’s enthusiasm for quick argument and strategy sometimes backfires, like when he accidentally discredits the cell phone data in his pursuit of proving Glowoski wrong.