Jim Gilmore is described as short and dark with big muscles and big hands" in the third sentence.
It is unclear why Liz takes to Jim, but we can only assume it's because she lives on the sandy road from Charlevoix to Boyne City consisting of just five houses. As the reader, we assume that there are no tall men around.
In the end, Jim gets drunk on whiskey and takes Liz for a walk that turns into a romp down on the hard rough hewn hemlock planks of the dock. She lies there, suspended above water, but pinned between huge immovable boards and his sour sauced carriage, concealed by only the thin mist rising from the bay with the onset of evening. And yes, it is a rape.
It's not a rape because Liz didn't want it. It's not a rape because Jim was so inebriated he couldn't really tell right from wrong. It's a rape simply because Jim was short, and Liz decided right then and there that she didn't want it after all.
Lake Charlevoix is a beautiful, serene, isolated inland bay of Lake Michigan that sits between Traverse City to the south and Petoskey to the north. Apparently they used to haul Michigan ore (mostly copper) through this area for smelting somewhere else. It's an interesting place and located only about an hour or so's drive from where TSINAH now claims to live.