That's Not My Name

Megan Lally’s That’s Not My Name, a young-adult thriller published in 2023, tells two intertwined stories from alternating first-person perspectives. In one point of view, 17-year-old Madison Perkins wakes up on the side of the road suffering from amnesia. When a man comes to fetch her from the police station, he tells her that she is his daughter, Mary, and he takes her home with him to his isolated cabin in the Oregon woods. As she struggles to understand what has happened to her and to accept her identity as Mary, she begins to have doubts about whether the man who claims to be her loving father is actually telling the truth. Meanwhile, high school senior Drew Carter-Diaz is searching for his missing girlfriend, Lola. Lola disappeared after an argument with Drew, and he is desperate to find the young woman he loves and prove that he had nothing to do with her disappearance. That’s Not My Name is Lally’s first published novel. Her second, No Place Left to Hide, will be published early in 2025. 

This guide refers to the 2024 Sourcebooks Fire paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain references to murder, violence, kidnapping, self-harm, child abuse, and police harassment.

Plot Summary

A young woman, later revealed to be Madison Perkins, wakes up in a ditch at the side of a rural road in Oregon. She is in pain, her clothes are bloody, and she is almost numb with cold. At first, she struggles to move—but despite having no idea how she came to be in the ditch, she understands that it is important to get herself up and seek help. As she staggers along the road, she has just one flash of memory, and she is not sure what it might mean: She remembers hands reaching for her when she was standing at a mailbox. Police lights flash behind her, and she is discovered by Officer Bowman. Bowman asks her name, and they are both startled to realize that she has no idea who she is.

After a paramedic checks her over and declares that she is not seriously injured, Bowman takes the young woman to the police station. While they are looking through missing persons reports to try to figure out who she might be, a man enters the station. He seems panicky and asks for help finding his missing daughter, Mary. The man, Wayne Boone, says that he and his daughter were driving separately to his fishing cabin but that Mary never arrived. He thinks she may have been in a car accident. He describes the young woman exactly, but when she comes out of Bowman’s office to see him, she does not remember him at all. Wayne shows them photos of Mary on his phone and an old school ID of Mary’s, offering to get her birth certificate and other documents from his cabin. Exhausted and looking forward to sleeping in a real bed, the young woman agrees to go to the cabin with Bowman and then, if Wayne provides the documents that prove her identity, stay there with Wayne. When she arrives at the isolated cabin, she is puzzled by the Christian-oriented reading material, cheerful posters in “her” room, and the jean jacket with floral sleeves that Wayne tells her is hers. She remembers none of these things, and they don’t feel like her taste. Still, she knows that her head injury and amnesia have scrambled her thinking, and she really needs a hot shower and some sleep, so she settles in and tries to adjust to her identity as Mary Boone.

Meanwhile, in another Oregon town a few hours away, high school senior Drew is in the public library making copies of the missing person flier for his girlfriend, Lola Scott. His cousin Max arrives and the two argue about Drew’s obsession with finding Lola; Drew’s family is very worried about him, but Drew is determined to find Lola for two reasons: He loves her, and the local authorities and his community believe that Drew is responsible for Lola’s disappearance. Later in the day, Drew runs into Lola’s best friend, Autumn. Autumn and Drew have been friends for a long time, but even she seems to believe that Drew is a killer. She tells him that she has known for weeks that he is responsible for Lola’s disappearance but angrily stomps away without explaining why she believes this. Drew goes home and looks through the information he has collected about Lola’s movements on the day she disappeared. He is especially saddened by the photo he took of the two of them at the Willamette River boat launch, a vivid reminder of the last time he was with her and the guilt he feels about the way he treated her that night.

Although the young woman in the cabin, who now thinks of herself as Mary Boone, is trying to keep an open mind about the warm and supportive man who claims to be her father, signs begin to emerge that something about the situation is not right. Wayne does not know what she is allergic to, resulting in two dangerous allergic reactions. When Wayne takes her to a thrift store to buy some clothing, he insists that she is a homebody who does not like to go anywhere and that she loves bright colors and florals—but she is actually excited to go out and feels drawn to dark colors. She is unnerved by his increasingly controlling behavior and his conservative rules about what she can read and wear. When Ben Hooper, an elderly neighbor, stops by to introduce himself and let them know that he’s close by if they need help with anything, Wayne sends “Mary” into the cabin abruptly. Shortly afterward, she has a memory of what she thinks is her mother—but when Wayne shows her a picture of the woman he claims is her mother, the two women look nothing alike. The young woman begins to feel uneasy and confused about what is going on.

At the same time, Drew is finally starting to make some progress in his quest to find Lola. After he confesses to Autumn that he feels guilty about Lola’s disappearance because he broke up with her that night, Autumn realizes that she misunderstood the supposed evidence of Drew’s guilt. They team up with Max to steal the sheriff’s tip line information and discover an important phone call from a woman in Waybrooke who claims to have seen Lola recently. When Sheriff Roane declines to follow up on this tip, the three friends take off on their own to meet up with the woman in Waybrooke. From her, they learn that Lola visited a local thrift store. The owner of the store tells them that the young woman they think is Lola is staying with a man at a cabin in Alton, north of Waybrooke. They decide to give their information to the Alton police and get a motel for the night.

Meanwhile, the young woman at the cabin is beginning to recover her memories. She has more memories of her mother, and she remembers flashes of her high school and of playing on a softball team. None of her recollections make sense with what Wayne has told her about Mary Boone. Officer Bowman stops by to ask whether Wayne has seen Ben Hooper, who has disappeared. Wayne claims to have never met the man, which the young woman knows is a lie. Wayne tells her that it is time to leave the fishing cabin and return to their home in McMinnville, a few hours away. Suspicious about what might have happened to Hooper and worried about the mounting evidence that Wayne is not her father, she is terrified as Wayne packs them up and gets ready to move her to a new location. After seeing a coyote with a bloody mouth, she discovers a hole the animal has been digging: inside, she finds Hooper’s body. She is sure now that Wayne is a killer and that, far from being her loving father, he is actually her kidnapper. Wayne finds her standing near Hooper’s grave and tells her that she has ruined everything. She hits him in the head with a rock and runs. Just when she is about to reach the safety of a neighbor’s cabin, however, Wayne catches up with her. Telling her that she will pay for her escape attempt, he chokes her until she loses consciousness.

In the morning, Drew, Max, and Autumn go to the Alton police with their evidence. They meet Officer Bowman, who tells them about finding “Mary” and assures them that Mary Boone is not Lola Scott. Drew learns about Ben Hooper’s disappearance and, hearing that the Hoopers are the Boones’ next-door neighbors, he takes Hooper’s address and drives to the fishing cabin on his own. When he pulls into the driveway, he sees Wayne carrying a young woman who looks like Lola and depositing her in the cabin’s basement. After Wayne leaves the basement, Drew enters it and discovers Madison. He instantly realizes that Bowman was right and that she is not Lola—that Lola is dead, one of Wayne Boone’s previous victims. Knowing that the young woman in front of him now is in danger, he decides he has to help her despite the risk to himself. As Drew tries to free her from the manacle around her ankle, Wayne returns. Together, Drew and Madison fight and kill Wayne.

Four months later, on what would have been Lola’s birthday, Madison visits Drew while he is sitting at the boat launch, mourning Lola. She works to help him see that what happened to Lola was not his fault. Together, they light a candle on a birthday cupcake for Lola. After Madison leaves, Drew realizes that he feels a little better and that, eventually, he will learn to carry on without Lola.