The Overnight Guest

The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf is a thriller novel set in rural Iowa, where true-crime writer Wylie Lark rents a farmhouse that hosted a heinous crime 20 years prior. During a winter storm, she finds an abandoned child outside the home. Trapped with a new mystery, she must finally face her own traumas as she tries to protect her young charge. Gudenkauf has spent most of her life in Iowa, using her knowledge of rural farm communities to bolster the setting of The Overnight Guest. The Overnight Guest is her ninth novel; her work has appeared on both the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists, and she has been nominated for the Edgar Award. Another work by Gudenkauf is The Weight of Silence (2009).

This guide refers to the 2022 Park Raw Books paperback edition of the novel.

Content Warning: This novel features depictions of sexual assault, domestic violence, murder, child endangerment, miscarriage, and gun use.

Plot Summary

The Overnight Guest spans three different timelines, each using close third-person point of view. In the present timeline, Wylie Lark prepares for an incoming winter storm in the town of Burden. She has rented a nearby farmhouse where, 20 years earlier, three people were murdered, and a teenage girl went missing.