Fourteen lives meet around three deaths at the cliffs. None of them is the villain, and none of them is the hero.
A philosopher and public thinker whose work on the “meaning crisis” and relevance realisation underpins the festival at Koonalda. After Ruby, Charlotte and Fox die at the cliffs, he is forced to ask whether his language of awakening, thresholds and transformation has been dangerous in the wrong hands, and whether his project can survive honest contact with these deaths.
The organiser of the spirituality-and-meaning festival and Charlotte’s uncle, now facing manslaughter charges. Torn between loyalty to John’s work, practical guilt about safety, and the legal machine judging him, Alex becomes the lens through which the book explores duty of care, risk, and what it means to build structures that might outlast you.
A facilitator and friend to John and Alex, deeply invested in circling and other relational practices. Guy moves between logistics and care, trying to hold the community together while recognising that the festival’s experiments with altered states, awe, and connection did not protect the most vulnerable.
A fifteen-year-old living with chronic, unexplained pain and a hunger to understand why life feels both unbearable and “numbly overfull.” Drawn to John’s lectures on awakening and relevance realisation, she finds both hope and danger in the festival’s promise of meaning, culminating in the dawn at the cliffs with Charlotte and Fox.
Ruby’s mother, a Christian whose grief quickly becomes public anger and activism. Faith inspires an online callout JusticeForRuby, pushes for a large, public funeral, and becomes a central voice demanding that the festival, Alex, and John be held responsible, even as she wrestles with the cost of turning her daughter into a symbol.
Ruby’s father, a lawyer trying to think clearly inside guilt, marital fracture, and media scrutiny. Simon oscillates between legal analysis, internet searches about suicide, and encounters with John’s work, becoming a key figure in the novel’s exploration of blame, confession, and the difference between legal verdicts and existential truth.
Ruby’s younger sister, present mostly in the background of domestic scenes. Pearl’s ordinary child life (school, church, play) becomes a quiet counterpoint to the intensity of grief and trial, and a reminder of what is at stake beyond the public arguments.
Alex’s niece from Sydney, restless and sceptical until the bonfire and John’s talk begin to speak directly to her anger and confusion. At the cliffs, Charlotte’s search for beauty and awe becomes entangled with risk, and her death forces Alex and John to confront whether their work could hold the people closest to them.
A teenager from Alice Springs, more silhouette than fully known, but increasingly filled out through guesswork, police reports, and the reactions of others. Fox’s presence in the trio at the cliff edge emphasises how little adults often know about the inner lives of young people drawn to meaning, risk, and escape.
Charlotte’s and Fox’s parents, whose grief and public responses appear alongside the Duvals’. Their funerals, media statements and quiet refusals shape the wider field of grief and responsibility in which the trial unfolds.
Prosecutor and defence counsel in Alex’s trial. Through them, the book shows how stories about meaning, negligence, faith and teenage risk are translated into legal arguments about duty, breach and causation.
The Duvals’ parish priest, present at home, in church, and at Ruby’s funeral. He represents a more traditional Christian attempt to hold suicide, grief and justice together, and sits in quiet tension with both Faith’s activism and John’s philosophy.
Neighbours, parish members and online supporters who bring meals, prayers, flowers and social media campaigns. They show how personal grief is quickly absorbed into wider networks of care, outrage and activism, sometimes easing suffering and sometimes amplifying it.
Together, these characters (philosophers, organisers, parents, lawyers, teens, priests and neighbours) form a web around the three deaths at the cliffs. Seeing More Than We Could See Before is less about one villain or one hero and more about how each of these lives tries, and often fails, to see clearly what is at stake when meaning, grief, and responsibility collide.