Bag of Bones

Mattie Devore is the secondary protagonist of Bag of Bones and a romantic interest of Mike Noonan. Mattie’s conflict involves trying to retain custody of her daughter, Kyra Devore, against the legal challenges from her father-in-law, Max Devore. Mike only enters her conflict as an interfering force. He is not involved with inciting this conflict, even though he escalates it with his interference and ultimately helps with resolving it.

Mattie is characterized by her working-class background. Her backstory indicates that she moved around several times to live with different relatives before meeting her future husband, Lance Devore, at the country club where Mattie worked as a waitress, Warrington’s. Mattie’s extraordinary beauty leaves many men smitten in her presence, save for the TR-90 old-timers. Many of the old-timers, like Max and Royce Merrill, are quick to accuse Mike of being involved in a sexual relationship with Mattie. None of them see the challenges that Mattie faces as a single working-class mother, or recognize her own complex personhood.

When Mike meets Mattie, Mattie is working as an assistant at the town library. Mattie is aware that people think she is lucky because of her involvement with two wealthy men, Lance and Mike. Mattie emphasizes the social challenges she faces with raising Kyra: Even if she wins the custody case against Max, she still has to make ends meet, paying for the bills and loans that she and Lance took on when they were married. Since Mattie is still a relatively young adult, she is not too far from the idyllic days of her courtship with Lance. She speaks longingly of that time, grieving her husband and dealing with social isolation as Max turns her old friends against her. When Mattie loses her job at the library, her problems intensify.

Mattie starts to feel hope for her future when Mike leverages his own resources to give her a fighting chance in the custody battle. When the custody case turns in her favor and Mattie gets her library job back, she declares her feelings for Mike. Shortly afterwards, Mattie is killed in a drive-by shooting by Max’s cronies, Footman and Osgood. However, she reappears at the end of the novel as a ghost at Dark Score Lake, helping to defeat Rogette Whitmore before she entrusts the care of Kyra to Mike.

Max Devore is the main antagonist of the novel. Max is a bully who will stop at nothing to get his way. The first time Max engages with Mike, he pretends to care only for Kyra’s best interests. When Bill Dean makes it clear that Max only acts to benefit himself, Max’s sinister nature emerges, looming over Mike and Mattie as a constant threat, even after he dies.

King draws from villain stereotypes to characterize Max as a bully and a mastermind. Part of Max’s backstory involves breaking into a neighbor’s house and stealing another boy’s sled simply because he coveted it. He becomes wealthy by being an early pioneer in the computer software industry, allowing him to settle in California years after he caused a wildfire that destroyed the cabins in Tidwell’s Meadow. As a wealthy man, Max uses his resources to buy the loyalty of various people in TR-90, employing some of them as spies and henchmen. Max is an elderly man who is physically weak, relying on the use of a heavily accessorized wheelchair to move around. He also relies on his much stronger personal assistant, Rogette Whitmore, to do physical tasks on his behalf, such as throwing rocks at Mike.

Max dies by suicide, though it is left ambiguous whether this was part of his master plan or if Whitmore leveraged her physical strength to remove Max as a power player. In any case, Whitmore continues to serve Max’s wishes after his death, executing the false codicil that promises Mattie a portion of his wealth if she remains in TR-90 for one year. This condition gives Max’s other cronies the opportunity to kill Mattie, likely intending for any custody to pass on to Whitmore, who is ultimately revealed to be Max’s daughter.