True+Believer+-+Summary

Jeremy Marsh is a scientific journalist who specializes in disproving the supernatural in his regular column of //Scientific American//. He lives and works in New York City, and has recently appeared on Primetime. His next investigation is the “ghost lights” in a cemetery in a tiny town in southern North Carolina called Boone Creek.

When he first arrives, he decides to check out the cemetery. He meets a very attractive woman, and hits on her, but she turns him down flatly. He’s not too upset about this, so he goes back into town and has lunch at the local diner, Herbs. Here he meets Doris Darnell, an older woman who explains the town to him, and who also claims to be a psychic. In fact, she has a gift to be able to predict the sex of a baby before it is born. She has a book with entries of every baby she’s ever predicted.

Jeremy decides to go to the library to try to get some background information for his research. He discovers that the librarian happens to be the woman from the cemetery, that her name is Lexie Darnell, and that she is Doris’ granddaughter. She shows him around, and he does some research before going to the local hotel, the Greenleaf, for the night. The mayor, Tom Gherkin, meets him here and tells Jeremy multiple times how happy they are to have him there.

The next day, he returns to the library, but this time, he is able to convince Lexie to go to lunch with him. They pack a picnic lunch and drive to the top of a hill to talk. They talk about past relationships; he tells her about his ex-wife Maria, and she tells him about her ex-fiancée who left her to move to New York. She tells him some things about herself; how she’s lived her whole life in Boone Creek, how her parents had died in a car crash, how she had been raised by her grandparents, and finally, about her special place near the ocean, where she goes when she needs to think or be alone.

Meanwhile, the mayor decides to have a party in honor of Jeremy. He asks Doris to be in charge of all the planning, and she agrees after some prodding. The mayor asks Jeremy to attend the party, and he agrees. Then, he asks Lexie to go with him. She eventually gives in, and they show up together. Rodney, the town cop, is not pleased by this, as he’s been courting Lexie for quite a while, and she just isn’t that interested in him. The party is basically a plot by the mayor to get the town to like Jeremy, and to get Jeremy to like the town because he wants Jeremy to do a television special on the town’s ghost lights, thereby making the town more popular, and more successful.

The party is very nice, and everyone enjoys themselves. Lexie and Jeremy leave after a while so that they can go to the cemetery. The ghost lights are seen especially in the fog, and so that night is perfect for viewing them. Jeremy tapes the lights and records observations, and Lexie helps him. They talk some more as Jeremy slowly falls deeper for her. Lexie, however, holds back and tells him good night before things can go any further.

The next morning when Jeremy arrives at the library, he finds that Lexie has gone to “take care of some personal things.” He decides to look for her, because he’s concerned that his actions the night before had scared her off. He gets a phone call while doing this from his friend and colleague Alvin, who is coming down to help him with his research. He also gets a phone call from his manager, Nate, about some very important opportunities that he blows off, mostly because it doesn’t seem as important to him anymore.

Jeremy looks all around the town for Lexie. When he can’t find her, he goes to Herbs to ask Doris. She tells him that she’s gone, but she won’t say where. He realizes that if he doesn’t find her, he might not see her again before he leaves to go back to New York. Finally, he remembers something she told him once, and he knows where she is. He packs his things, and leaves for the cottage by the sea.

Lexie, meanwhile, is thinking things over on the beach. She had realized the night before when Jeremy was thinking about kissing her that she had wanted him to. This is the last thing she wanted because the reason she didn’t want to get involved was because she realized he would be leaving soon. She is just wondering if there is any way it could ever work out when Jeremy arrives and surprises her.

They make dinner together, and talk some more. Lexie becomes more and more confused about what to do because of how she is feeling about Jeremy, but is still fighting it because of the distance. Jeremy asks her to dance, and they talk a little more before Lexie finally gives in.

The next morning, they go back to the mainland because Jeremy‘s flight is the next day. A message on Jeremy’s phone tells him that Alvin has arrived, and been put in the county jail. They go to bail him out, and Rodney tells them that it’s because he had been drinking and driving. Lexie talks to him about it and manages to get Alvin freed.

Jeremy goes back to the library to finish up his research. But when he talks to Lexie, she seems distant and talks to him as if they were no more than acquaintances. He goes to the rare-book room to continue working when he comes across an interesting article by Owen Gherkin dated forty years ago which gives the cause of the ghost lights. It explains them just as Jeremy thought; they were a combination of the paper mill, the train tracks, the nearby hill, and the phases of the moon. Jeremy realizes that this was written by the Mayor’s father, and that Lexie had known about it as well when she suggested he look at the diaries. He confronts her about it, and she tells him that she did know about it, but didn’t say anything because she knew he would do his investigation anyway. He feels betrayed and lied to, and gets very angry. They get into a fight about the case, and their relationship, and it ends with her going home and telling him to stop pretending that he wanted to work things out because he would be doing the same soon.

Jeremy tells the mayor that he’s discovered the secret behind the lights, and plays along with it until he tells him that he knows the whole thing was a publicity stunt and that his father had found the answer years ago. He tells him that there will be no television story about this, and that he was leaving.

The next morning, Jeremy has all his bags packed and is ready to go. He finds Lexie waiting beside his car. They apologize for the fight at the library the day before, and Lexie starts to tell him goodbye. Jeremy tries to tell her that he wants to make things work, and that he loves her. He’s finally starting to convince her when she tells him she can’t because she’s going to marry Rodney because he’s hard-working, he loves her, and he’s there. Jeremy leaves devastated.

Once he arrives back in New York, he tells his editor about the story, but he downplays it and it works. Boone Creek will have no feature on it, and Mayor Gherkin via phone call agrees to stop advertising it and selling the ghost lights.

A couple days later, Doris shows up at Jeremy’s apartment. She tells him that she wanted to come see him in person to talk to him about Lexie. She says that Lexie is in love with him too, even though she won’t admit it, and that she lied to him about marrying Rodney so that letting him go would be easier for her. Jeremy realizes that he loves her to, and books a flight back to Boone Creek with Doris.

When he arrives, he looks all over town for her. When she’s not at the library, her house, or the diner, he finally realizes where she is. He drives up to the cemetery, and, sure enough, finds her there.

He tells her that he’s there to stay and they embrace. Jeremy buys a house there, and Lexie tells him that they have a miracle of their own: a baby, and shows him Doris’s prediction that it will be a girl.