Susie’s mother is Abigail, and they have two other children named Lindsey and Buckley. She quickly learns this is a mistake, and he rapes and then kills her. She was fourteen years old when she was raped and murdered by her neighbor. Meet our narrator, Susie “like the fish” Salmon (1.1). A large icicle then falls on his shoulder and as he tries to shake it off, he ends up falling down the ravine and he broke his back and neck on a tree, killing him instantly and brutally. But the original author of the book, Alice Sebold, stated that the story was partially based on a real rape and murder of a young girl in Norristown, Pennsylvania, who was kidnapped from her parents in the 1970s. The afterlife storyline, in which Susie watches her family from purgatory, is not real. Susie Salmon from The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold Although no one would ever wish for Susie Salmon’s character to be inspired by real events, it is based on a young girl’s murder in Norristown, Pennsylvania in the 1970s. Near the end of the story, a developer plans to fill the sinkhole with concrete, which is what causes Ruth to decide to visit it. No one ever finds the rest of Susie’s body, though when Ruth and Ray visit the sinkhole much later, Ruth wonders whether Susie’s body was left in it. On December 6, 1973, he lures his 14-year-old neighbor Susie Salmon into an underground “clubhouse” he had built in the woods near his house, and rapes and murders her once she is in his power. The In-Between can be interpreted as a grieving space for Susie and her family to utilize on their journeys toward whatever comes post-'The Lovely Bones' for them.What did George Harvey do to Susie Salmon?Īs an adult, Harvey murders a number of girls and women. Ruth, her 'otherworldly' classmate, can see her and feel her presence, while Buckley draws her afterlife and says she visits him. This ambiguous, spiritual plane - while separate from reality - is tethered to people in Susie's former life. 'Everything she reacts to and does is her subconscious having to deal with the various mysteries and questions that she's confronted with when she's in the In-Between.' We didn't really look on it as a practical, physical location as it is a bit more in the book,' he told SFGATE. 'We based it very much on the subconscious. Director Peter Jackson said his interpretation of the place intentionally differs from Sebold's. 'I was alive in my own perfect world,' Susie says of her time there. The In-Between allows them to explore the gleeful, innocent fun that was taken from them while still being able to connect with their old lives.

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