The Quarry Girls: A Thriller

Jess Lourey introduces The Quarry Girls with a note on growing up in 1970s Minnesota when serial killers like John Wayne Gacy, the Son of Sam, and Ted Bundy began targeting their victims and garnered wide-swept media attention across the United States. Lourey’s hometown of St. Cloud had three active serial killers during her adolescence, two of whom were caught and one of whom remains unnamed to this day. The narrative is situated, then, during a time when serial killers were on the rise not only in Minnesota but across the United States. Aspects of this crisis and changing social norms are mentioned throughout the novel. Hitchhiking—for example—was common practice among young people, including women that Lourey mentions when Maureen turns up missing. Serial killer Edmund Kemper, otherwise known as the Co-Ed Killer, started his eventual killing spree by picking up female hitchhikers before letting them go. Eventually, Kemper killed the women whom he offered rides to.

The narrative examines the misogyny in American culture and how this sexism contributes to the abuse of young women, both fictionally and in the real world. In her note, Lourey cites that “70% of serial killer victims are female” (i). The Quarry Girls examines the social and cultural contributors to such a staggering statistic, looking at how violent notions of misogyny shape both men and women. Lourey uses characters like Ant, who bends to Ed’s will, and Junie, a child who is treated like a woman by predatory men, to show how young people can be manipulated or abused by older figures. Likewise, the implication of the Sheriff and DA in the town’s ring of child sexual abuse illuminates how violent misogyny is a structural issue rather than just an individual one. By creating a microcosm of the cultural and social nuances that contributed to misogynistic violence in 1970s Minnesota, Lourey captures the tensions and threats that surrounded young women and men across the US.