The Narrator
The narrator, a dark-haired, blue-eyed Canadian woman, grew up during World War II (1939–1945) traveling to remote areas with her brother, mother, and father for her botanist father’s work. Despite her father’s atheism…
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Joe
Joe, the narrator’s current lover, is a blue-eyed, shaggy-haired man who has difficulty expressing himself verbally. An experimental ceramics artist and pottery teacher, he met the narrator in an art supply store. On the…
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David
David, husband to Anna and friends with Joe and the narrator, is at “over thirty” the oldest member of the group that goes looking for the narrator’s father. As a young man in…
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Anna
Anna, a green-eyed woman with dyed blond hair, is David’s wife and friends with Joe and the narrator. In fact, the narrator considers Anna her “best woman friend” though they’ve only known each…
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The Father
The narrator’s father, a botanist, raised the narrator and her brother in an atheistic household that moved frequently among different remote areas of Canada. A committed rationalist, the narrator’s father disliked other human beings…
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The Mother
The narrator’s mother died of some terminal illness “in the head,” possibly brain cancer, before the main events of the narrative. She delayed going to the hospital until she could no longer walk because…
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The Brother
The narrator’s older brother may or may not exist: when the narrator realizes that she has been covering up the trauma of her illegal abortion with false memories, she admits that her memories of…
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The “Husband”
Initially, the narrator claims that she was married to a man who only wanted her to reproduce but covered that up by constantly claiming to love her; she later divorced this man and abandoned their…
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Paul
Paul is an old Quebecois friend of the narrator’s father who still lives in the village near the narrator’s family cabin. A kindly man, he writes to the narrator to let her know of…
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Minor Characters
Evans
Evans, originally from the U.S., is a tourist guide in remote northern Quebec who boats the narrator and her friends to and from her family cabin.
Claude
Claude, a sullen youth, is the son of the man who owns the motel in the village near where the narrator’s father disappeared. He works in the motel and as a guide for hunting-and-fishing tourists.
Madame
Madame, wife to Paul, is an elderly Quebecois woman who speaks almost no English, only French.
Malmstrom
Malmstrom is an American preservationist from Detroit, Michigan who offers to buy the narrator’s family cabin from her while her father is missing.
