Violet Sorenson-Lowell

Quick Facts

• Role: Second Sorenson daughter; central figure whose secret drives the plot
• First appearance: Flashback to Wendy’s 2000 wedding; present-day life in Evanston as a former litigator turned stay-at-home mother
• Family: Husband Matt Lowell; sons Wyatt and Eli; an older sister (Wendy); a biological son placed for adoption as a teen (Jonah); parents Marilyn and David
• Defining conflict: The return of the child she relinquished, which collides with the flawless domestic identity she’s constructed

Who They Are

Violet Sorenson-Lowell is the sister who “did everything right”—the high-achieving former lawyer who has transformed ambition into a finely tuned domestic machine. Her curated life of silk blouses, school pickups, and Evanston status doubles as armor, keeping her own past at bay. Fifteen years earlier, she had a baby and relinquished him for adoption; when that son, Jonah Bendt, reappears, the life Violet designed for control and safety begins to unravel. She becomes the book’s clearest study in the cost of containment: a woman who tries to out-organize pain until truth—especially the truth of motherhood—demands to be integrated. Her arc embodies Secrets and Their Consequences, exposing how an immaculate exterior can mask unhealed fault lines.

Personality & Traits

Violet’s defining trait is control—of image, schedule, and narrative. Yet the more polished she appears, the more brittle she becomes, a composure constantly threatened by anxiety. Her story shows a gifted manager of life who, when confronted with irreducible mess, must learn the tender work of imperfection.

• Controlled, image-conscious: She “always felt the impetus to present herself lavishly,” swapping her usual pricey athleisure for a “graceful silk butterfly-sleeve blouse” before lunch with her sister—appearance as social strategy and self-soothing.
• Anxious, tightly wound: When Jonah later sees her, she’s “pale—almost grayish,” with a pinched mouth—an outward register of the inward panic that spikes into flight at their first near-encounter.
• Judgmental (as self-defense): She measures herself against her older sister’s chaos, believing her choices more responsible; the superior stance helps her deny vulnerability—until it no longer works.
• Secretive, controlling the narrative: “I’ve never told anyone this,” she insists, guarding the adoption as a private citadel for fifteen years—even from her husband—until the secret itself becomes corrosive.
• Maternal yet conflicted: Her body betrays her at the restaurant—“a sharp uterine tug”—but fear for Wyatt and Eli erupts as anger in the Santa incident, revealing love deformed by panic.
• Avoidant under pressure: She flees the first meeting, then “outsources” Jonah to others—first to her sister and later her parents—postponing the reckoning that only she can face.

Character Journey

Violet begins as the family’s safe bet: competent, controlled, and emotionally distant enough to keep her footing. Jonah’s return detonates that equilibrium. Her first response is panic and avoidance—bolting from the restaurant, delegating his care to Wendy Sorenson and then to her parents, Marilyn Sorenson and David Sorenson. The reveal devastates trust with her husband, exposes old codependencies with Wendy, and forces Violet to confront the distance between the image she tends and the reality she lives. A genuine crisis—her father’s heart attack—recalibrates her fear; faced with what truly matters, she steps toward candor. At a playground, she offers Jonah an apology and partial truth, admitting she has “never stopped thinking about” him. By the novel’s end, the edges of Violet’s life are softer but truer: she’s begun a real relationship with Jonah, repaired the bedrock with Wendy, and accepted that love is sturdier when it’s honest, not flawless.

Key Relationships

• Wendy Sorenson: As near-“Irish twins,” their bond is a knot of loyalty, rivalry, and fierce recognition. Wendy alone knew of Violet’s pregnancy and later forces the reckoning by bringing Jonah back, turning sisterly codependence into a crucible that burns away pretense and rebuilds trust on frankness rather than role-playing.

• Jonah Bendt: Jonah’s return is the existential test of Violet’s motherhood. She evolves from visceral panic and avoidance to cautious presence, moving from guarding her constructed life to claiming—however tentatively—her maternal tie to him.

• Matt Lowell: With Matt, Violet enacts the fantasy of a well-run life—predictable, glossy, and safe—until secrecy buckles their marriage. Their fracture spotlights the theme of The Ideal vs. Reality of Love and Marriage: love cannot thrive under curated perfection; it requires the risk of telling the truth.

• Marilyn and David Sorenson: Long the daughter “no one had to worry about,” Violet upends her parents’ narrative of her when she confesses the adoption. Their shock reverberates through the family’s history, forcing everyone—Violet most of all—to see her not as a role but as a complicated person.

Defining Moments

Violet’s story turns on scenes where her need for control collides with ungovernable love. Each moment strips away a layer of performance and moves her toward honesty.

• The Restaurant Sightline: Seeing Jonah for the first time since infancy triggers “a sharp uterine tug,” and she flees. Why it matters: Her body recognizes him before her mind can consent, revealing a maternal truth she’s tried to suppress.
• Confession to Her Parents: “I wasn’t in Paris. I was here, and I was pregnant, and I had a baby and I gave him up.” Why it matters: She detonates the family myth of Violet-the-Dependable, trading invulnerability for adulthood.
• The Santa Claus Incident: “There’s no reason for you to try to ruin it for my kids,” she tells Jonah after he “ruins” Santa for Wyatt. Why it matters: Fear for her younger sons hardens into cruelty, showing how panic can weaponize love and driving a wedge she must later repair.
• The Playground Apology: “I’ve never stopped thinking about you,” she tells Jonah, offering a partial truth about his father. Why it matters: It’s the first time she lets her present self hold hands with her past, choosing relationship over control.
• Reconciliation with Wendy: She arrives to “clear the air,” and the explosive conversation yields a fragile truce. Why it matters: Violet abandons the safe distance that has kept their bond brittle, relearning intimacy as accountability.

Essential Quotes

She tried to remember the last time she’d seen her sister, and decided that it must have been on Second Thanksgiving...and this struck her as absolutely ludicrous, because she and Wendy lived twenty minutes from each other; because they’d shared a bedroom for almost a decade; because Violet, during the darkest time in her life, had moved in with Wendy and Miles; because they were practically twins, after all, separated by less than a year.

This passage captures the ache beneath Violet’s competence: proximity without presence. Her busyness functions as a buffer, and the “practically twins” line underscores how deeply intertwined they are—making their distance less a lapse and more a symptom of avoidance.

This wasn’t supposed to be happening. There was not a single element of this that was supposed to appear again in the life she’d worked so hard to build; not a single molecule of this road not taken...was ever supposed to find its way back to her, especially now, when her husband had made partner and she had made continual strides among Evanston’s social elite, when one of her boys was school age and the other was heading there fast.

Violet’s manifesto of control reveals how thoroughly she equates goodness with order. The “road not taken” returns anyway, exposing the limits of design and turning her curated success into the very thing she must risk to become honest.

"Jonah is also your son, Violet."

This blunt statement punctures Violet’s compartmentalization. It compels her to recognize that the maternal identity she embraces with Wyatt and Eli must also include Jonah, collapsing the categories that have kept her safe.

"I’ve never told anyone this," she said. "I asked Wendy and Grace," he admitted. "Wendy and Grace don’t know anything. Nobody knows. As I said."

The exchange shows Violet’s fierce grip on the narrative—secrecy as power and protection. Jonah’s search for answers highlights the relational cost of that control: a son forced to triangulate truth because his mother can’t yet offer it.

"I’d like to have you in my life again," Violet said. "If you’d like to be in it." "Christ, you’re dramatic." "I’m sorry there have been times I wasn’t there for you. I’ve been—having a hard time. Lately, and—for a while, I guess. I don’t know. I put a lot of pressure on myself, Wendy, and it—it’s harder than it looks, all right?"

Violet’s apology to Wendy reveals humility breaking through performance. She names the pressure she’s placed on herself—an admission that doesn’t excuse her absence but does open the door to a relationship built on vulnerability instead of perfection.