Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 553

Ruth Stone

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Ruth Stone, the protagonist and first-person narrator. An awkward adolescent during much of the novel, Ruth is often silent and likes to read. Like the biblical Ruth, she is destined to follow others; first her sister Lucille in a search for acceptance from the town, then her aunt Sylvie in a search for identity. Ruth, though passive and interior, carefully considers the world around her and is a keen observer. She gradually abandons the conventional world of Fingerbone, Idaho, for the lure of a transient lifestyle with Sylvie. As Ruth recollects the events of the novel, she builds her identity.

Lucille Stone

Lucille Stone, Ruth’s younger sister, who is usually the one to lead her older, more shy sister around. Lucille is more interested in being like everyone else than is Ruth. She attempts to participate in the shadowy forms of housekeeping practiced by Sylvie but eventually abandons the hope that her aunt—and eventually, even Ruthie—will ever conform to any recognizable social conventions. Lucille is not content to drift; she is interested in anchoring and some permanence in her life.

Sylvie Foster Fisher

Sylvie Foster Fisher, Ruth and Lucille’s mysterious aunt. She comes to take care of Ruth and Lucille after Lily and Nona declare themselves unable to do so. Sylvie attempts to overcome her urge to drift and travel without destination in a heroic effort to provide a home for her nieces. Ruth and Lucille know nothing about their aunt when she comes to live with them, and Sylvie volunteers little other than that she is still married to Mr. Fisher and that she left him and has been living a life of satisfied transience. Her pockets are full of odds and ends, and she is generally impervious to the conventions of rearing children. Sylvie does one thing that the other caretakers of Ruth and Lucille have failed to do: She stays until...