57 pages • 1 hour read
Daniel G. MillerThe Orphanage by the Lake
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Genre Context: Psychological Thriller and Noir
The Orphanage by the Lake is a psychological thriller that plays with the classic tropes of noir detective fiction. Noir fiction is a style of film and literature in which the protagonist, often a detective or private investigator, is forced to navigate a bleak landscape and social environment to solve a crime or uncover information. It is a style that came to prominence in crime fiction in the 1930s and 1940s with novels like The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) by James M. Cain. Both of these works, along with many others, were made into films that have markedly black and gray color palettes in keeping with the dreary “noir” style.
The Orphanage by the Lake has many elements that conform to traditional noir crime tropes. Like Raymond Chandler’s iconic Philip Marlow, Hazel Cho is a private detective who is struggling to make ends meet, drinks too much alcohol, and does not take very good care of herself. Like in any detective noir, her life changes when a tall, rich, beautiful blond woman walks into her office with a mysterious case. She is forced to navigate through a cold and spooky fall environment marked by torrential thunderstorms that evoke a classic noir atmosphere. The densely urban setting of New York City is another typical element of noir crime novels.
However, author Daniel G. Miller has subverted some of the classic noir tropes in The Orphanage by the Lake. Most notably, his protagonist is not a white man, but instead a Korean American woman. The narrative itself is a psychological thriller told from a first-person perspective. Taken together, this creates a focus on the difficulties a Korean American woman faces in conducting her investigation, such as racism, misogyny, and the threat of rape, that is not typical in noir crime.
Geographical Context: New York City and Lake George, New York
The Orphanage by the Lake uses references to parts of New York City and other geographical locations as shorthand for understanding the characters and their situations. Protagonist Hazel Cho lives in Chinatown. Chinatown is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. It is a rapidly changing, but still largely working-class, neighborhood in Manhattan that is home to many Asian communities. Hazel’s decision to live in Chinatown is emblematic of her desire for independence while still maintaining ties to her Korean heritage. It also highlights that she is not exceptionally wealthy. Her living situation contrasts with Andrew DuPont’s neighborhood in the Upper East Side. Indeed, Hazel notes that he lives just one block away from Central Park. This is one of the wealthiest, whitest areas of Manhattan. They are thus geographically as well as economically from different worlds.
Hazel Cho’s investigation leads her out to the orphanage in Lake George in “upstate” or rural northern New York state. Lake George is a very small town in the Adirondacks region in northwestern New York state. It has a population of about 3,500 permanent residents and is a popular tourist destination in the summer for city residents. The drive from Manhattan to Lake George takes about four hours.
The contrast between the urban environment of NYC and the rural environment of Lake George heightens the tension in the novel. Lake George is known for being beautiful in the summer, but in the fall when the novel takes place, that same location seems menacing. Hazel is a fish-out-of-water outside of the city trying to navigate this hostile rural environment.
