Ismay Evans-Parish

Quick Facts

• Role: Older sister of Nic Fikry and sister-in-law to A. J. Fikry; married to the novelist Daniel Parish
• First appearance: Urges A.J. to attend an estate sale where he acquires the rare Poe collection, Tamerlane
• Occupation: High school drama teacher; later co-owner of Island Books
• Central connection: Her secret dealings help bring Maya Fikry to Alice Island and catalyze the novel’s plot
• Themes: A living prism for Love, Loss, and Second Chances

Who They Are

Ismay Evans-Parish is a woman whose longing for a family—shaped by seven miscarriages and a husband’s serial betrayals—curdles into secrecy and self-reproach. At first glance she’s the animated drama teacher with spiky red hair and pale, expressive features; A.J. even jokes she looks “like a very pretty Gollum” during pregnancy, a detail that exposes how her theatrical exterior can be misread or minimized. Beneath that surface lives a meticulous fixer whose choices—stealing Tamerlane, bargaining with Marian Wallace—are meant to control chaos but instead unleash it. Ismay’s self-image as a “bad book with a good jacket” becomes the key to reading her: she performs competence on the outside while believing the text of her life is irredeemable.

Personality & Traits

Ismay blends performance and penitence. She projects control (a clear, stage-trained voice; big gestures) even as private guilt isolates her. Her defining tension is between care and control: she wants to help, but the methods she chooses—secrecy, manipulation—magnify harm before they pave the way to hard-won honesty.

• Disappointed, turning resentful: Years of miscarriages and Daniel’s infidelity sour her hope. Nic sums it up—“She always ends up so disappointed”—and Ismay later admits, “I’m bad. I married a bad man,” revealing how disappointment calcifies into self-condemnation.
• Theatrical, self-directed: Her “precise, theater-trained” voice and overlarge gestures mirror a habit of staging her life, from pushing A.J. to the estate sale to choreographing Marian Wallace’s disappearance.
• Guilt-ridden strategist: She steals Tamerlane and tries to buy Marian’s silence, then recoils when Marian returns, decisions that haunt her after Marian’s suicide. The secrecy becomes a private punishment she inflicts on herself for years.
• Caring but misguided: She drags A.J. out of his grief to the estate sale and helps when Maya arrives, yet her care is compromised by the lie at its center—her silence about Maya’s parentage and the theft.
• Resilient, capable of repair: After Daniel’s death, she grows her hair, softens her presence, and—more importantly—chooses confession and community. Running Island Books with Lambiase signals a new ethic: connection over control, truth over performance.

Character Journey

Ismay begins as a secondary figure orbiting A.J.’s grief, defined by a miserable marriage and thwarted motherhood. In the shadows of that grief, she makes her most consequential choices: slipping Tamerlane from A.J.’s apartment and delivering it to Marian Wallace, believing money and distance can erase scandal. When Marian returns, broke and desperate, Ismay slams the door—an act that reverberates through Marian’s suicide and Maya’s arrival. The truth curdles inside her; she watches the family she wanted coalesce around Maya and tells herself, “She should be ours,” compounding love with envy.

The fatal car crash that kills Daniel ends her cycle with a narcissist but not her guilt. Her turning point comes years later with Chief Lambiase, whose steadiness invites confession. Telling him everything—Maya’s paternity, the theft, Marian—becomes the climax of her arc. In finally choosing truth, Ismay steps into the community she feared she’d forfeited, eventually co-owning Island Books and embodying the novel’s faith in Found Family and Community. Her story charts the move from performance to presence, from secret-keeping to belonging.

Key Relationships

• Daniel Parish: With Daniel, Ismay is trapped in a punishing loop—she begs for fidelity and a child; he offers charm and betrayal. Discovering he fathered Maya confirms her worst intuitions about him and herself, pushing her toward both the theft and a corrosive sense that she “deserves” her loneliness.

• Nic Fikry: Ismay measures herself against her younger sister, the “good girl.” Nic’s death intensifies this imbalance; mourning becomes self-accusation, as if failing to be like Nic explains every misstep that follows.

• A. J. Fikry: Initially connected by duty, they grow into a bruised, honest friendship. The cruelty of Ismay’s hidden betrayal—stealing Tamerlane—coexists with tangible care for A.J.; the delay in telling him underscores how shame can hollow out even loving bonds.

• Chief Lambiase: Lambiase is the antidote to Daniel’s narcissism: quiet, decent, patient. He receives Ismay’s confession without judgment, turning truth-telling into a practice that allows her to live in the open; their shared stewardship of Island Books makes their partnership public and restorative.

• Maya Fikry: Maya is both the niece Ismay loves and the wound she cannot ignore. Ismay’s thought—“She should be ours”—exposes the tangle of yearning and guilt that keeps her distant until confession lets her love Maya without envy.

Defining Moments

Ismay’s turning points are all decisions about control versus connection; each redefines what she owes to herself and to others.

• The theft of Tamerlane: She pockets A.J.’s rare book while he’s passed out, choosing secrecy as a solution. Why it matters: This theft seeds the entire plot and marks the moral line she must eventually cross back over.
• Bargaining with Marian Wallace: She hands over the stolen book to make Marian disappear, then rejects her when the plan fails. Why it matters: Her refusal to face Marian’s return becomes a hinge to Marian’s suicide and Ismay’s lifelong guilt.
• The car accident: During a fight where she confronts Daniel about Maya, their car is hit and Daniel dies. Why it matters: The crash violently ends her marriage but initially traps her deeper in silence; freedom from Daniel is not freedom from the lie.
• Confession to Lambiase: Years later, she tells him everything—Maya’s paternity, the theft, her role with Marian. Why it matters: Confession transforms punishment into responsibility, enabling repair with A.J., Maya, and herself.

Essential Quotes

Nic was the good girl. I’m bad. I married a bad man, too. And I know that bad people deserve what they get, but oh, how we hate to be alone.

This is Ismay’s self-indictment and defense in a single breath. She internalizes moral failure as identity—“I’m bad”—but also exposes the human terror of abandonment that drove her choices. The line reframes her secrecy as a tragic attempt to stave off loneliness.

You are bad. And what’s worse is, you’ve made me bad... Every time I see her with A.J. and Amelia, I’m sick. She should be ours.

Here, envy sharpens into confession: loving Maya coexists with coveting her. Ismay recognizes moral contagion—the way Daniel’s betrayals warp her into someone she doesn’t want to be. The ellipsis signals how inarticulable her shame is, even as she admits it.

I talked to Daniel that night on the phone. It was a good talk, and I didn’t bring up Marian Wallace. He was solicitous of me, started making plans for our own baby’s arrival... I decided right then and there that I would take care of the problem with Marian Wallace. I would find a way to buy her off.

The passage maps her pivot from hope to harmful agency in real time. She equates “taking care of the problem” with concealment, revealing how her practical competence becomes morally catastrophic when yoked to fear and desire.

Well, I’m warning you. I could be a bad book with a good jacket.

Ismay’s most revealing metaphor fuses vocation and self-concept. She fears her polished exterior hides an irreparably flawed text, but by voicing the worry she starts to revise it; the line anticipates a later life in which she sells books honestly and, by extension, reads herself more generously.