Novel Title: Under Illusion
Time Setting: 2021
Genre: Thriller
Minimum Word Goal: 120,000
Timespan: September
Locations: Spokane, Washington; St. Louis, Missouri; Charleston, South Carolina; Dallas, Texas; Nogales, Arizona.
Main Characters: Trace O’Hannigan, Dallis Mihaljević
Background Information:
Born in Central Alberta as the only son and third of four children to his parents, Trace spent the first eleven years of his life enjoying a semi-rural upbringing before his parents divorced.
As his father worked in the oil industry, which took him away for days, and even weeks, at a time, Trace and his sisters were put exclusively in their mother’s custody, especially when their mother met a reasonably wealthy American man and chose to move in with him, which necessitated their moving to the United States.
His mother soon married the man and applied for permanent residency in the United States for herself and her children, which kept Trace and his sisters from even returning to Canada to visit their grandparents — which Trace, particularly, wanted to do, as he’d been very close with his grandparents.
Before they’d been living in the United States for five years, external circumstances also conspired against Trace and his sisters returning to Canada for some time, as their stepfather lost his job in the Great Recession, and as he and their mother struggled to find jobs, thus they ate through much of his accumulated wealth, forcing them to move to a considerably less affluent neighbourhood than they’d previously lived in.
Having not really come from an exceptionally affluent background in Canada, Trace didn’t mind the shift, especially when he ended up befriending an elderly widower who lived on their street who reminded him of his grandpa not that long after he learned that his grandpa had suffered a fatal stroke.
Finances continued to be a concern for Trace’s family, which prompted Trace and his sisters to each seek jobs once they were in high school in order to ensure that they had money to spend on things that they wanted; the highest want on Trace’s list being a return trip to Canada.
He didn’t end up making his return to Canada until he was eighteen, however, by which time he’d enrolled in a trade school in Spokane to learn mechanics on the recommendation of his neighbour, thus he only went for a visit, where he met his stepmother and stepsisters and discovered that his father had succeeded in accumulating wealth by being able to work longer hours without children around.
Owing to a poor first impression between himself and his stepmother, Trace was glad he’d not sought to move to Canada and enrol in a trade school there, although he still sought to save up as much of the money he could spare outside of what he needed for his education toward the desired end of moving back to Canada, albeit in a home of his own instead of living with his father, as he’d thought he might before he’d met his stepmother.
In the end, however, Trace had a conflict with fellow students that prompted him to quit his mechanics course after completing his third year, and soon after his younger sister, who’d struggled to understand and accept her parents’ divorce, and subsequent remarriages, and also had mental health problems that concerned Trace deeply, ended up murdering her mother and stepfather before killing herself.
As a result, Trace found both stepfamily and biological family, as well as some friends, distancing themselves from him, except his neighbour, who actually took Trace in to live with him, and his best friend, both of whom knew Trace didn’t have his sister’s mental health problems, which were undoubtedly the motive for her actions.
Since even his family in Canada was disturbed by what his sister had done, and his finances had become tight, Trace didn’t go up for what had become his annual visit to Canada, but, instead, sought out a job in the United States, following the advice of his neighbour and getting his license to drive large delivery trucks, which got him a job in rather short order driving locally.
Although initially not bad, Trace quickly found that his employers were demanding more of his time, but not giving him much, if any, more money for what he was doing, which was also compromising his sleep.
As a result, he quit driving for them and sought another job in the same field. He found one that offered better wages and working conditions, and applied for it, which proved to be a substantially more rigorous process than applying for his first job had been with several interviews, background checks, and more.
Adding to the uncertainty, Trace has yet to be told by his employer what kind of cargo he’ll even be hauling across the United States, with the possibility of even making trips into Canada and Mexico, which does make him wonder what exactly he’s getting himself into.
Born the only daughter and youngest of three children to her father, whom she knew worked in some sort of illegal or nearly-illegal field, Dallis was, however, the first — and, as it would happen, only — child her mother ever gave birth to.
Owing to her father’s work, Dallis was actually born in Europe, as her father had been, and spent her first two years there — during which her mother miscarried what would’ve been a little brother for her — before the family settled in St. Louis to be near her father’s family.
Before they’d lived much more than a year in St. Louis Dallis’ mother — who was pregnant at the time — was shot to death and her father also nearly died while leaving a birthday party for one of Dallis’ brother’s friends. Dallis later learned from her brothers that the killers had been hired by her mother’s ex-boyfriend, who’d not appreciated that her mother had been wooed away from him by her father, and had been unable to kill her sooner because of the family’s residence in Europe.
Dallis’ father did manage to survive the attack and raised Dallis and her half-brothers with the help of the family whose son’s birthday party her family had been attending at the time of her mother’s death, as the father of that family had been a schoolmate and friend of her father.
Although all three of his children were precious to him, Dallis was the particular object of her father’s protection, to the point that she became frustrated and struggled against him with the assistance of her brothers until her father finally explained to her that she was the perfect image of her mother, whom Dallis hardly remembered.
As a result of the explanation, Dallis’ relationship with her father improved — as did her brothers’ relationship to him, as they’d both believed his protectiveness of Dallis to be unreasonable, and had striven to help her defy her father until he explained himself — prompting her to become alarmed when he didn’t return home when he’d said he would a few years later.
She and her brothers grieved deeply when they discovered that he had been murdered by a serial killer in California on his way home, prompting her oldest brother, who’d moved out of the family home, to move back in and take care of Dallis and her other brother, both of whom were several years younger than him, and thus not allowed to live on their own yet.
Since her father had worked in an illegal or nearly-illegal line of work, Dallis’ brothers had followed him into somewhat similar fields, and upon her father’s death, Dallis was also drawn into the criminal world.
Like her father, however, her brothers remained fiercely independent, not becoming wholly affiliated with any one group of criminals, but making or breaking alliances as it suited them, which her brothers were able to do without any retribution because of their father’s reputation for fierce independence.
As their sister, Dallis has stuck with her brothers, who are the only men in the world that she trusts completely to keep her safe and be interested in assuring her wellbeing, and are also still teaching her what she needs to know in order to command the same respect from those around her as her brothers are able to command.
She is not, however, completely dependent on her brothers, even though she genuinely loves them too much to really want to separate all that far from them, but is considered by some of those who previously associated with her father to actually have the most personality similarities to her father of his three children, even though she is still very much the picture of her mother.
Pronunciations:
Nogales: nohzhahlehz
Mihaljević: mihhahljehvihch
