Stone Maidens

Content Warning: This novel contains depictions of violence, gore, and child abuse. It also contains sensationalized and inaccurate depictions of Indigenous people in Papua New Guinea.

As Prusik fights to catch a suspected serial murderer and prevent more violence, she also fights an internal battle to overcome the lasting effects of traumatic events in her past. The ongoing trauma of Prusik’s near-fatal attack in graduate school remains with her well into her career in the FBI. The panic attacks and symptoms of anxiety triggered by the connection between her past and her current case cause her past trauma to manifest as negative physical experiences in the present, indicating that “the past is never done with us” (96). When she first makes the connection between the details of Missy and Julie’s murders and her own attack, “an itchy panic [takes] hold of her” in the investigation room. Later, at the sight of a crime scene photo, Prusik’s “heart start[s] to gallop and her breathing [becomes] ragged” (58). Richard repeats this heart-as-horse metaphor when Prusik arrives at the crime scene: “her heart at a canter [as] the uncomfortable sinking feeling [takes] hold again” (96). Although Prusik tries to fight against this physical response, she finds that the trauma of her experiences lives inside her: “it [is] in her body now. It [is] in her bones. It [is] in her throat” (106). These passages demonstrate the ways in which the traumatic memories of Prusik’s attack continue to affect her and that her trauma is manifested in her body, with unexpected and unwanted physical reactions accompanying her emotional turmoil.

The novel is explicit in connecting these physical reactions to the specific memory of her attack in Papua New Guinea. Even before the details of her attack are revealed, Richards implies that her panic attacks are tied to a specific moment, as “ten-year-old adrenaline” rushes through her (96). Richards uses Prusik’s reaction to foreshadow the significance of the stone charms she finds in the victims’ body long before that significance is made explicit to the reader: “the vial in her hand had taken her straight back to the heat, the water, the terror” (97). Later, at the Chicago Museum of Natural History, Prusik is forced to admit that the sight of “the warrior, the mask, and the charm stone [have] taken her straight back to the Turama River basin and immobilized her in her tracks” (121). Both of these passages firmly tie Prusik’s traumatic response to the specific memory of her attack in Papua New Guinea, highlighting the lasting effects of this traumatic event.

Richards continues to explore the last effects of trauma by revealing Holmquist’s own childhood abuse and positioning his violent actions as a direct result of that trauma. As a child, Holmquist’s mother punished him for wetting the bed by forcing him to eat pieces of gravel from the yard. As an adult, Holmquist integrates both elements of that abuse into his murders—placing stone amulets in the throats of his victims and urinating near their corpses. Richards takes his exploration further and suggests that the effects of Holmquist’s trauma extend to his mirror-twin, Claremont, who experiences the anger and violence of his twin vicariously through a series of visions. Richards reinforces his implication that Holmquist’s violence is rooted in his childhood abuse by demonstrating that although both twins share the same genetic makeup, only the one who grew up in an abusive environment became a killer. Similarly, Richards positions Holmquist and Prusik as opposite sides of a single coin—both experienced trauma, but Holmquist channels the lingering effects of that trauma into violence, while Prusik’s motivates her to prevent violence and search for truth.