The Heiress

The Heiress, published in 2024, is Rachel Hawkins’s fifth adult novel. Hawkins is well-known for her young adult novels, including the Hex Hall series and the Rebel Belle series. Hawkins shifted into adult fiction with The Wife Upstairs, a modern retelling of Jane Eyre in 2021, which became an immediate New York Times Bestseller. Since then, Hawkins has become known for her unique twist on the Gothic suspense genre. The Heiress follows Cam McTavish’s reluctant return to his family’s estate, Ashby House, and explores themes of Rediscovering the Past From a New Perspective, The Influence of Family Culture on the Individual, and What Makes a Good Person.

This guide refers to the 2024 St. Martin’s Press e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain references to physical abuse, domestic violence, psychological manipulation, death by suicide, alcohol use disorder, and substance misuse.

Plot Summary

The novel opens with three epigraphs. The first is an article from Outside magazine about the history of unsolved disappearances in the Appalachian Mountains. It suggests that humans, not the wilderness, are often to blame for the misfortunes, deaths, and disappearances of others. The next article, dated 1943, addresses the disappearance of three-year-old Ruby McTavish during a picnic in the mountains. The last epigraph defines the word “changeling” as “[a] child put in place of another child” (5).

The Heiress alternates between the first-person perspectives of Jules Brewster and her husband, Cam McTavish. Interspersed are letters from Ruby McTavish, Cam’s adoptive mother, to an unknown recipient, dated just before her death.

Jules and Cam live a quiet life in Colorado—she works at a living history museum, while he teaches high school science. One day, Cam receives an email from Ben McTavish, a relative in North Carolina. Ben’s father is dead, and Ashby House, the family estate, is in desperate need of repair. Although Ben, his sister, Libby, and his grandmother, Nelle, all live off the family wealth at Ashby House, Cam is actually the owner, having inherited the McTavish fortune from his mother Ruby, Nelle’s sister. Jules is excited about visiting Cam’s home, but he is reluctant. Although Cam is the sole heir of Ashby House and the family’s millions, he hasn’t touched the money or returned to Ashby House since he left 10 years before, just after Ruby’s death.

Upon arriving at Ashby House, Cam realizes that his family members are as entitled as they always have been. Nelle is cruel and snobbish, and Ben and Libby are bullying and manipulative. However, he also rediscovers the nearby town, Tavistock, the site of happy memories with Ruby that he had, until now, forgotten.

One day, Ben and Jules go for a walk in the nearby woods and discuss how they actually collaborated to bring Cam to Ashby House. Jules insists that she just wants what is best for Cam and believes they can make Ashby House their home.

When Ruby was just three years old, she went missing and was found eight months later living as Dora Darnell with a family in Alabama. One night at dinner, Ben and Libby reveal that they have DNA tests that prove Ruby was not a McTavish—she really was Dora Darnell. Cam already knew this and points out that even though Ruby was not a blood McTavish, she still had the right to her inheritance, as does he. When they make clear, however, that they will have him investigated for Ruby’s death, he decides to leave and give them everything. Jules doesn’t understand until he confesses to her that the night Ruby died, she swallowed pills and left him with the decision of whether to call the ambulance. Wanting to be free of her manipulations, he let her die. He made sure her cause of death was listed as heart failure but always felt guilty about his role in her death.

The morning after Cam’s confession about Ruby, he and Jules wake to find out that Nelle has died. They decide to leave, and Jules packs their bags while Cam wraps up business in town. When he returns, Ashby House is on fire. Jules escapes, but Ben and Libby die. Jules tells the police that Ben started the fire, but Cam knows she is lying and is responsible for Ben’s death. He isn’t mad at her for not telling him—he just hopes one day she will share the truth.

After Ashby House burns, Cam and Jules buy a house near the ocean. Jules discovers she is pregnant, and Cam feels relieved at losing Ashby House and being free of his family. They still have a portrait of Ruby, which survived the fire.

In Ruby’s letters, she describes how she disappeared from the woods near Ashby House when she was three years old. She was found eight months later at the home of a former employee, Jimmy Darnell. Ruby thinks this event affected her life in ways she can’t understand.

Ruby is also famous as “Mrs. Killmore” because she married four times, and all her husbands died. Her first husband, Duke, was abusive. One night, he taunted her with a rifle, and when he put it down, she picked it up and shot him. She concocted a story about a burglar, which the police believed because Duke was gambling and intoxicated that night. She repeated this pattern with each of her husbands’ deaths, using the McTavish name to escape responsibility.

Ruby’s second husband, Hugh, died after she suggested that he wire fairy lights in an old barn in the hopes that he’d be electrocuted; she doesn’t consider his death to be murder. She truly loved her third husband, so much so that she told him about Duke’s death, to which he responded with sympathy and understanding. When she told him about Hugh’s death, though, his reaction was different. Although they stayed together, he distanced himself. Unable to bear his silent judgment, she poisoned him over the course of a year. She eventually relented, but it was too late, and he died. Ruby’s fourth husband was fun until his partying lifestyle became too much, and she pushed him over the side of their boat. His last name, Kenmore, caused the media to nickname her “Mrs. Killmore.”

After her fourth husband’s death, Ruby wondered if her murderous tendencies were rooted in the trauma of her childhood abduction. She hired an investigator to find the Darnells and discovered that she wasn’t Ruby McTavish—she was Dora Darnell. She found her sister, Claire, who told Ruby how their parents sold her to the McTavishes after the real Ruby disappeared. Upon hearing the story, Ruby decided to take the McTavish fortune away from the family. Although she was the sole owner, she worried that after she died, the family would continue the same entitled behavior that they engaged in when they bought her. She adopted Cam and made him her sole heir.

In Ruby’s final letter, her correspondent is revealed to be Jules, who is actually the granddaughter of Claire Darnell. Together, they came up with a plan to not only give away the McTavish fortune to Cam but also share the wealth with the Darnell family by having Jules begin a relationship with Cam.

Now, Jules reveals that after Ruby died, she carried out their plan and moved to California to meet Cam. She didn’t count on falling in love but now believes that it was fate that Ruby brought her and Cam together. Their love is real, even though she hasn’t told him the origins of their relationship. Jules doesn’t know that Cam has known about the scheme all along but loves her too and doesn’t hold it against her.