The Library at Mount Char

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of cursing, graphic violence, antigay bias, death, animal cruelty, animal death, child abuse, child death, physical abuse, and emotional abuse.

Carolyn is walking along an isolated highway, barefoot and drenched in blood, having just murdered Detective Miner. She’s a librarian in Garrison Oaks, a housing subdivision in Virginia that Americans, for some reason, can’t remember. When Carolyn was eight, her parents and many neighbors were killed there. She and 11 other children were taken in by Father, who made them his apprentices. He calls them Pelapi, which translates to something like librarian and pupil. 

Father is very old and has immense knowledge and power: He can make lightning, stop time, and speak to stones. The written theory and practice of his powers are stored in the Library and organized into 12 catalogs, one for each child to study. The librarians who appear most frequently in the novel and their catalogs are Carolyn (languages), David (war, murder, martial arts), Jennifer (medicine, healing, resurrection), Michael (animals), and Margaret (death). The others, who appear infrequently in the book, are Peter (math, engineering, cooking), Alicia (time travel), Rachel (whose ghost children see possible futures), Richard (armorer), Emily (finder of secrets and lost things), Lisa (mind control), and Jacob (unidentified) (Hawkins, Scott.