The Edge of Nowhere

Elizabeth George’s young adult novel The Edge of Nowhere (2011), a bildungsroman, or coming of age story, follows Becca King, a girl who travels from San Diego to the mostly uninhabited Whidbey Island to escape her murderous stepfather. Expecting initially to stay for a short time, her mother leaves her behind. She spends four years on the island, trying to hide her supernatural ability to hear “whispers,” or the thoughts of those around her. The novel is the first of a sequence of books by George chronicling the people who come and go from Whidbey Island. Collectively, the books are known for elegantly characterizing life on this remote island in the Pacific Northwest.

The novel begins when King, then called Hannah Armstrong, goes on the run with her mother to escape her stepfather, Jeff, having learned that he has planned a murder. They leave their home in San Diego and head north. Hannah takes on the new name Becca King, knowing that it is necessary to cover her tracks. She also dyes her hair black and adopts an alibi that she is traveling to Washington to live with her mother’s friend. Laurel, King’s mother, urges her to remain aware of her surroundings at all times. She gives her a burner cell phone that stores only her number. She also gives her a device called an AUD box, which looks like an iPod but emits waves of static that interfere with King’s ability to hear whispers.



King has a complex past with her whisper ability and her stepfather. He used to use King as a tool to get into the heads of clients at his investment firm, gaining an unfair upper hand in negotiations. On the other hand, King utilized her ability to find out that he was plotting a murder, giving her and her mother a head start. When King is around a large group of people, the whispers can become overwhelming. She allays this contingency by always keeping her AUD headphones near.

When King reaches Whidbey Island, she is mesmerized by its stark contrast to the world she knew in California. Hills and forests stretch endlessly away. The denizens of the island seem to have known each other forever. Her mother’s friend, whom King agrees to call “Aunt Carol,” doesn’t seem to be present on the island, causing her to question whether she even exists. King resolves to find Carol via bike. Soon, she begins to encounter the island’s quirky characters. Though some seem innocuous, when she arrives at Carol’s house, King runs into a group of police cars. She eavesdrops on an ongoing investigation and learns that the person who was supposed to be Aunt Carol has perished in a freak accident. When she tries to call her mother, the call fails, causing her to assume that her mother ditched her.

Without parents or other guiding figures, King tries to start a life on the island. She begins high school and tries to befriend her peers, who perceive her as weird and unattractive, with the exception of Derric, an orphan from Uganda who has been adopted by an American family. Derric treats King kindly, embarrassing his clique of friends and a number of girls who are attracted to him. King also meets Seth, a friendly musician who has dropped out of high school, and Debbie, a girl recovering from alcoholism who shows her the ropes of the town. King meets another girl, Diana, who seems to be able to conceal her whispers from her.



One day, Derric is ambushed and attacked in the woods. The people of Whidbey Island scramble to figure out who committed the crime. As they look for answers, King hears his whispers, in which he keeps repeating the word “rejoice” in a secretive tone. She doesn’t know what it means but feels closer to Derric since he clearly has a secret of his own. Indeed, Derric helps King acclimate to the island, slowly convincing her that it isn’t necessary to live life running from the past.

Meanwhile, King’s mother is presumably in Canada trying to arrange safe passage for them to live in the country. Before she hears confirmation from her mother, the novel ends on a cliffhanger, and King finds out her stepfather has arrived on the island. The Edge of Nowhere thus tracks its young protagonist’s negotiation of her identity on the precipice between safety and peril. Ultimately, it suggests that no matter how adept one is at dredging up information about the inner lives of the people around them, there will always be much more to the story.