The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to domestic violence, violent murder, and suicide.

Sixteen-year-old Sage is the main character of the novel. Everything that happens is filtered through her perspective. Ellen Marie Wiseman uses third-person limited narration, so although Sage doesn’t tell the story herself, she is both the point-of-view character and the focal character. Sage comes from an abusive household, where she lives with her stepfather Alan. Sage is also an identical twin, “with matching strawberry-blond hair, high cheekbones, and silver-blue eyes flecked with touches of violet” (26); the novel begins with her learning that her sister Rosemary is not dead, as Sage was told, but has been institutionalized for mental illness.

Sage is characterized as brave, strong, and intelligent: Determined to rescue Rosemary, she confronts her stepfather and goes to Willowbrook alone. She is willing to fight when she’s threatened. When Alan slaps her and degrades Rosemary, Sage stands her ground and yells back at him. When she is forcibly confined as her sister, Sage argues and then physically resists Willowbrook staff. Her fighting spirit saves her life when Eddie attacks her at the end of the novel.