The Heiress

Cam is the other protagonist of The Heiress. His chapters are interspersed with Jules’s, and the reader hears his side of the story almost as evenly as hers. Although the novel begins and ends in Jules’s point of view, centering the text slightly more on her, the story ultimately revolves around Cam’s past and family.

Before returning to the Ashby House, Cam is a “regular guy who taught high school English, and rented a nice but small house” (82). He was working as a bartender when he met Jules, who was surprised that he acted as if he didn’t “have a bank account with nearly a hundred million dollars in his name and a mansion on the other side of the country” (82). This understatement is characteristic of Cam, who is quiet and unassuming. However, this belies his resilience and strength of character, illustrated by his ability to leave his fortune behind for his emotional well-being. He is also understanding, even more than Jules knows. At the end of the novel, it is revealed that he has known, since nearly the beginning of their relationship, that she had an agenda when they met. He is also insightful, however, in that he recognizes that although Jules may have first gotten to know him because of his McTavish wealth and status, she genuinely fell in love with him, something Jules tells the reader as well.

Cam fully understands The Influence of Family Culture on the Individual and has steadfastly refused to use his family’s influence—except in one case. When Ruby dies by suicide, Cam uses the McTavish name to quash an autopsy and investigation, showing that he is not completely immune to his family’s power. When he returns to North Carolina, however, he is surprised to realize that he does have good memories from that time as well, which he had forgotten. Cam’s journey throughout the novel revolves around Rediscovering the Past From a New Perspective and coming to a new understanding of his relationship with Ruby and his family. By the end of the novel, he realizes neither the McTavishes nor his birth mother are his family—Jules is his family. This realization frees him to rebuild the McTavish family in a new way.

Ruby McTavish is the matriarch of the McTavish family, and although she is no longer alive in the present storyline, her presence is still felt through her portrait, which hangs prominently in Ashby House. In it, “[h]er dark hair is loose around her shoulders, no bouffant for Ruby McTavish, even in the sixties, and she’s wearing an emerald-green evening gown […] her legs crossed demurely at the ankles, her hands clasped in her lap” (84). Her pose and lack of a trendy hairstyle show that Ruby is a woman who doesn’t submit to fads but has a timeless elegance. Ruby is at the center of both timelines in this novel: the past timeline, which tells the story of Ruby’s life through her letters to Jules, and the present timeline, in which Cam and Jules take over Ashby House and the McTavish fortune, which is essentially Ruby’s plan at work.

Ruby’s life is marked, nearly from the beginning, by trauma. She becomes convinced that her abduction is the root of that trauma, a belief that leads her to the discovery that she is actually Dora Darnell, and she hadn’t been abducted but sold by her parents when she was three years old. She is convinced that this trauma is behind the murders of her four husbands. As she tells the stories of her marriages through her letters, she tries to explain, or in some cases, rationalize, each murder. Ruby’s story highlights The Influence of Family Culture on the Individual, as she feels empowered to not only end her husbands’ lives but also use her wealth and influence to escape accountability. Ruby’s use of the family’s influence ironically echoes how her father, Macon McTavish, used his wealth and influence to buy a child to replace his own and then kill that child’s father.

Ben is Nelle’s grandson and is slightly older than Cam. He is an estate lawyer, and, as Cam figures out later, “that was [his] big reason for becoming a lawyer. And not just any lawyer, but one who specializes in estates. [He] spent the past decade trying to figure out a way to screw [Cam] out of [his] inheritance” (213). Ben serves a practical purpose in the text—he collaborates with Jules to get Cam back to Ashby House. When he meets her in person, however, he is confused by her mocking behavior; as Cam points out, “he can’t tell if he’s being made fun of or not. Men like him aren’t used to being mocked, which is probably why men like him exist in the first place” (88). Jules isn’t intimidated by his wealth or social status, and her treatment of Ben “breaks the spell” of the place a little for Camden.

Ben is Cam’s foil. When they first arrive, Cam notes how Ben closely resembles him: “Ben is two years older, and I’m maybe an inch taller than he is. He’s a little less lanky than I am, chest and arms thicker, and his hair is shorter […] but, yeah, we look enough alike to be brothers” (86). Ben shows what Cam could’ve become if he hadn’t made a conscious effort to distance himself from the family’s entitlement, highlighting The Influence of Family Culture on the Individual.

Libby is Ben’s sister and Nelle’s granddaughter. According to Cam, “Libby is a fuckup. Fucked up in school, fucked up the two or three different careers she’s attempted, fucked up two marriages, and she’s not even thirty yet” (45). Libby is also somewhat of a social media influencer, and Jules follows her on Instagram before they even meet. When Jules sees her in person, however, “she’s not quite as put together and polished as her Instagram makes her look” (79). This shift in Jules’s perspective on Libby is the first indicator that Ashby House and the McTavish family may not be what she thought they were.

Libby also has more intimate ties to Camden than Jules knows. She and Cam kissed when they were younger, and although Cam sees it as a mistake, he realizes that “that night—that fucked-up, deeply wrong night—might have meant something different to her than it did to [him]” (168). Libby’s father, Howell, pressured 17-year-old Libby to seduce Cam in order to put the family fortune back in McTavish hands. What happened between Libby and Cam is an example of how far some McTavish family members are willing to go to retain their wealth.

Libby also acts as a foil for Jules. She is wealthy and entitled, whereas Jules refers to herself as “Florida trailer park trash” (178). When Jules and Cam first arrive, Jules hopes to be friends with Libby, noting, “[W]e’re close in age—we even look a little bit alike—and I thought that might make it easier to build some kind of kinship with her” (176). This hope, however, is quickly dashed by Libby’s behavior. Their interaction illustrates Jules’s difference from Libby—as she tells Cam, “I grew up in Florida […] I eat overly tanned bitches who drive Audis for breakfast” (82). Her interaction with Libby highlights Jules’s characteristic forthrightness and resilience.