SeerWarns

Map · The people

The residents of Harmon

The people.

One protagonist per book, and the families and neighbors who orbit each one. The cast accumulates as the series grows, the ER nurse you meet in book one is still on shift when the burning-out doctor comes through years later; the careful county assessor who appears at a clerk’s basement window has his own book waiting. Everyone here lives in the same town. Below: the twenty whose turn it is to take the booth, then the recurring faces who carry the town between them.

The twenty.

Each book follows one ordinary person through the year the stranger came for them. They are listed here in the series’ recommended reading order; every story stands alone.

The Marsh family.

From The Good Father. The first family the series follows, and the family it uses to set its terms. Four people at a breakfast table; the book counts the plates as they disappear.

  • David Marsh · history teacher, Harmon High, Room 217
  • Sarah Marsh · ER nurse, St. Clare’s, the recurring hospital face
  • Emma Marsh · daughter, fourteen, the one who stops speaking
  • Cooper Marsh · son, eight, travel-league ball, the one who still believes
  • Helen Marsh · David’s mother, night office-cleaner, Room 14B at Lakeview

Around the Marshes.

The colleagues, the friend, and the handicapper who orbit The Good Father.

  • Rick Soto · math teacher at Harmon High, the friend who made it sound like math
  • Karen Silvestri · principal of Harmon High, who held the door longer than the form allowed
  • Hank · the OTB handicapper who taught David to read a racing form

The Calloway family.

From The Honest Woman. The clerk who keeps the record, and the family the plant fed for three generations, the family whose name is on the plant.

  • Ruth Calloway · town clerk, nineteen years in the basement office
  • Diane Calloway-Park · Ruth’s sister, hairdresser on Main Street
  • Tom Park · Diane’s husband, twenty-two years on the plant kill floor
  • Chester · Ruth’s golden retriever, asleep under the Town Hall desk

The Haskells.

From The Quiet Man. A store, a marriage, and a pencil mark on a door frame.

  • Boyd Haskell · owner, Haskell Hardware, thirty-one years behind the counter
  • Jean Haskell · his wife, retired elementary-school secretary
  • Tyler Haskell · their son, killed in Afghanistan in 2014 at nineteen; the door frame holds his heights, age 5 to 17

The Reilly family.

From The Loyal Man. The careful brother who keeps the honest books, and the generous one who keeps the favors.

  • Dennis Reilly · senior county property assessor, sixteen years at the same desk
  • Kevin Reilly · his brother, Reilly Property Group, laundromats and storage, the cosigned mortgage, the Lexus
  • Pam Reilly · Dennis’s wife, fourth-grade teacher at Harmon Elementary
  • Brian Reilly · son, twelve, the one who gets the ham-and-swiss sandwich
  • Katie Reilly · daughter, nine, draws horses, keeps the volume at six
  • Lorraine Reilly · Kevin’s wife, the one who stops calling
  • Frank Delgado · Dennis’s supervisor, a former Marine, who says it in three sentences
  • Maria Gutierrez · the county forensic accountant who finds the edit in eleven minutes (also The Design Partner)

The Brennan household.

From The Tired Mother. A doctor who can read a whole town, and the patient she keeps missing in her own house.

  • Cat Brennan · ER physician, St. Clare’s
  • Miles Brennan · her son, too quiet, too stable
  • Ray Brennan · her late husband, whose deathbed standing order she can’t discharge
  • Gloria · Ray’s mother, in slow decline out in Marl

The Torres family.

From The Lawyer Daughter. The North End family that built much of the North End, and the drawer the father left locked.

  • Diana Torres · corporate attorney, the good daughter
  • Ernesto Torres · her late father, founder of Torres Construction
  • Rosa Torres · his widow, still in the brick house on Riverside Avenue

Recurring faces of the town.

Not protagonists, but the connective tissue, the people who carry the town between the books and turn up, named and the same, across many of them.

  • Donna · the Lamplighter waitress since 1979, who pours the coffee without asking and keeps the wall of clippings
  • Margie Pearson · owner-cook of the Lamplighter since 1995, who makes the pie from scratch and keeps the quiet watch on the rooms
  • Hannah Calloway · the Sentinel’s town-hall reporter, Ruth’s niece, who writes what goes on the wall
  • Dr. Patricia Alvarez · palliative-care attending at St. Clare’s since 1998, the medical witness across the hospital books
  • Maria Gutierrez · the county forensic accountant who finds what everyone else walks past

The figure who is in every book.

Not a person on this list, and yet the one who appears in all twenty. The Seer, the calm stranger with the still hands and the brown pencil, sits down across from each protagonist exactly once, and is glimpsed in the background of every other story: a man in the corner booth of the Lamplighter, a passenger on the Route 22 bus, a figure at the end of the marina dock. More on the pattern →