The unnamed narrator of The Loud Earth lives the hermit life of the shunned. Her parents were murdered. She was acquitted of the crime, but small-town mentality condemns her nonetheless. She retires to a cabin in the mountains overlooking the town’s lake, and seems content to remain there until Hannah arrives at her door. Hannah, not of the town and thus not yet indoctrinated by the townsfolk into assuming the narrator’s guilt, brings new life to the recluse. The two fall into a relationship, but Hannah threatens to wreck the delusive barriers the narrator has erected to protect herself.