The Unmaking of June Farrow

The Unmaking of June Farrow (2023) is Adrienne Young’s second novel for adults and was a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. Her previous works include fantasy young adult novels and another novel for adults, Spells for Forgetting (2022). A magical realism novel, The Unmaking of June Farrow focuses on a family curse that has caused the Farrow women to exist in two times at once. The Farrow curse is connected closely with the town inhabitants’ perceptions of the women affected by it. Set in a small town, the fictional Blue Ridge Mountain community of Jasper, North Carolina, the novel draws on Young’s home in the same region.

Young examines The Complexities and Circularity of Lineage. The novel explores June’s relationship with Eamon, the husband she doesn’t remember when she returns to a past in which she left him. It also focuses on female members of June’s family, particularly Margaret—June’s grandmother, who June meets as a 16-year-old when she returns to the past—and Birdie—who June eventually learns is the grown-up version of her daughter, Annie. Throughout the novel, June loses her memories of her previous existence. She gains memories of her life in the 1950s as she breaks the family curse and decides to remain in the past with her family. Young thus emphasizes The Connection Between Memory and Identity.

This guide refers to the 2023 US Delacorte Press edition.

Content Warning: This guide refers to murder and death by suicide.

Plot Summary

The Unmaking of June Farrow opens with June attending the funeral of her grandmother, Margaret, who had been in decline over the last few years of her life. Inhabitants of the town of Jasper, North Carolina, and initially June herself, perceive her as ill or “mad.” However, she is afflicted by a family curse that affects the Farrow women as an unraveling of time: The Farrow women live in two different time periods at once. June is determined to ensure that the curse ends with her and is initially set against the idea of marrying and having children.

June receives a letter from her grandmother, dated two days before her death. It includes a 1911 photograph of a minister who was murdered in 1950 beside a woman June recognizes as her own mother. While she does not learn her family history until much later in the novel, it is eventually revealed that Susanna, June’s mother, conceived June in the past with Nathaniel and sent June to the future to protect her from her cruel father. Susanna tells Nathaniel that the infant June died, leading to the legend around June being found in an alley after Susanna’s disappearance.

June begins to investigate this mystery. She eventually tells both Mason, her closest friend, and Birdie, who is described as the third member of her family and Gran’s oldest friend, that the family curse is beginning to take effect on her. For the past year, she tells them, she has been hallucinating a red door, wind chimes, an ominous male figure, a voice, and a song. Birdie is alarmed that she has been seeing these things for a year and instructs June to go through the door the next time she sees it. Birdie is later revealed to be June’s daughter conceived with Eamon Stone, who June met on a previous trip to the past. Concerned that her daughter would have the Farrow curse, June had found a loophole to break the curse. The curse’s rule is that one only travels to a time in which one doesn’t exist, and June traveled from 1950 to 2022. Birdie has been waiting to help June return to the past. The delay means that June has been away from Eamon and Annie (Birdie’s given name) for a year.

Birdie gives June a letter that includes an address, a pressed flower, and the words “trust me,” which June later realizes are from herself. She goes to the address, sees the door, and goes through it. She meets Eamon, who is surprised she doesn’t know him, and tells her to stay in the house lest she be seen. She leaves anyway and meets a police deputy. He takes her to the flower farm, and she meets her great-great-grandmother, Esther. She sees a four-year-old girl she is afraid to ask about, who she eventually learns is Annie, her daughter. She meets the 16-year-old version of her grandmother and learns that her mother, Susanna, is dead. She discovers that she left Annie alone and grapples with that fact. June also learns the rules of the time travel: that all Farrow women eventually go through the door, which causes time to begin to “fray.” The year of travel is determined by the hands of a locket watch she previously knew as an odd family heirloom. A person can only make three crossings, and she has already made two.

After visiting town in an attempt to quell suspicion, June is stopped by Caleb, her brother and the town sheriff, who was conceived by Nathaniel and Susanna after Susanna sent June to the future. Caleb has been attempting to solve the mystery of his father’s murder and is suspicious of both Eamon and the fact that June has been mysteriously absent for the past year. He questions her and reveals that a witness saw her running, covered in blood, on the night of the murder. Shaken, she asks Eamon and Esther for more details. They tell her that when she’d been here before, Nathaniel had seemed to know who she was and stalked her. June and Eamon share an intimate dance at the Faire before he breaks off, saying it’s too difficult to be close to her.

Caleb breaks into the house, taking several newspaper clippings about Nathaniel’s murder and a list of dates of travel as potential evidence against the Stones. Eamon and June reconnect, eventually having sex, after which she asks him if he killed Nathaniel. He tells June that it was her who killed him. She finally remembers the event: Nathaniel telling her that she was an abomination of his sin and then holding her under water before she beat him to death with a rock. June realizes Margaret must have helped her travel through time. When she confronts Margaret, Margaret reveals that she helped June go to a time when she already existed in order to break the curse. Margaret also reveals that Annie grows up to become Birdie Forester.

The door finally appears as Caleb comes to arrest June for Nathaniel’s murder. While Eamon tells her she should go through the door to save herself, she decides to stay. After they discuss their father and June tells Caleb what he already knows—that Nathaniel killed Susanna—he lets her go. Susanna’s body is exhumed, finally confirming Nathaniel’s cruelty. The novel concludes with a second wedding between June and Eamon.