a major character and is spoken from that character's point of view. In a departure from the character sketches ofBull Run, each Seedfolks character speaks only in the one chapter that is named for him or her. Thereafter, the reader learns of a character's development largely through what is said about the character by others. Few of the characters are totally fictional; the average character was inspired by someone whom the author knew or had heard of from the family members and friends mentioned here. Others, Fleischman says in his Internet feature, "are parts of me."

Fleischman's zeal for mending the tears in the social fabric guides his choice of characters while leaving him much latitude for the individual personalities. While the characters include refugees from despotism and war, corporate abandonment and social isolation, family dysfunction, racial discrimination, and white flight, their sketches abound with surprises. The first chapter is devoted to a secretive Kim of Vietnam, while the next is devoted to an observant Ana, a retired and mildly disabled white woman whose family has lived in Cleveland since moving to America in 1919, when she was four. Ana makes her window her television screen and says she has watched Gibb Street change from a neighborhood of Romanians, to one of Slovaks and Italians, to one blending "Negroes" with Mexicans, other Latin Americans, Asians, and people of various ethnic backgrounds. Having once moved up to Cleveland Heights, she returned to Gibb Street after eighteen years to care for her ailing parents, now dead, and does not expect to leave again.

Wendell, the voice of chapter three, exemplifies the sustained insecurity of the white working class. A school janitor whose work subjects him to much bossing around, Wendell is now the only other white person in Ana's building. His telephone has brought him so much bad news that he dreads its ring.

Gonzalo, a character created from the author's experience as a volunteer aide for two years in a middle-school class for students learning English as a second language, makes his chapter, the fourth, show the role reversal that language barriers pose for adult immigrants from other lands.

Gonzalo is from Guatemala and in the eighth grade. He has discovered from the dependence that his father and aged Tio Juan (Uncle John) suddenly have upon him that "the older you are, the younger you get when you move to the United States." His growing mastery of the English language is the source of his independence and his main usefulness to his family. It also gives him another thesis: that cartoons and other television fare "can make you smart." Gonzalo is assigned to babysit his Uncle John on weekdays after school. Uncle John was a farmer back home, but since he speaks an Indian tongue that only Gonzalo's mother— who is away at work for long hours— understands, he has no way of getting help when he wanders out into the neighborhood and becomes lost. The day that he stumbles upon the garden, however, is the day that he begins to feel at home in America and to seem a man again, not a toddler. Gonzalo helps Uncle John plant a vegetable plot, and Uncle John sometimes motions helpful advice to other gardeners.

Sam of chapter six is closely modeled after the author himself. "When I lived in conservative Omaha for a year and owned the only beard on the block," Fleischman says in his HarperCollins statement, "I went out of my way to start friendly conversations with people at the bus stop and at the checkstand, trying to mend the rips in the social net." Sam is white and Jewish and, while retired, seems to have more means than most of the others. He studies and recites the etymologies of words and now makes it his "occupation" to get people to smile, especially at those fellow beings whom they habitually shun. Sam has devoted his career to leading and helping charitable organizations, including groups that support pacifism and world government. He sees in the gardening project some ways to continue his life's work. Being seventy- eight years old and "in no condition to dig up the soil," he hires a Puerto Rican teenager for that part and a third grader who owns a wagon to haul his water. Instead, Sam uses his own talents to work understandingly against the matter that Ana notices: the gardeners' tendency to group themselves by "race" or color.

Sam tells the others that the garden is a paradise, giving the word's Persian background. When the gardeners work together without regard for race or nationality, he thinks of the Garden of Eden. When they divide themselves by superficial qualities, he thinks of the Tower of Babel—or Cleveland itself.

Some major characters introduce interesting minor persons and events. Virgil, the Haitian boy helping his much seen but never named father raise gourmet lettuce, reports the heroism of Miss Fleck, his recently retired third grade teacher, as well the ambitious frenzy of his father. Sae Young, the young Korean widow who has lived in near-total seclusion since her dry cleaning shop was robbed and she was mugged, tells of the water-works contest. Maricela, the Mexican girl of sixteen who is to become, unhappily, an unwed mother, tells of the General Equivalency Diploma (G.E.D.) project that, reinforced by a talk from Leona about the beauty of life, gave her and two other pregnant teenagers the will to live and a way of keeping their babies alive.

Leona, Curtis, and Florence, the three main characters who are African Americans, depict both the problems that members of this group share with other working-class Americans and the racial discrimination that African Americans expressly suffer. Individually, they play significant roles in the story's development. Leona, who has migrated from Atlanta, does more than plant herself a patch of goldenrod as her grandmother would have done. Knowing that precious few others will be attracted to the garden as long as the smelly junk—"enough to curl up a crocodile's nose, especially in the summer"—is present, she takes the initiative to track down the vacant lot's ownership and convince the City of Cleveland to haul the trash away. Curtis, whose daily workouts at Kapp's Gym have caused him to be nicknamed for his deltoids—and to attract numerous admirers while losing Lateesha, his true love—acquires more lasting sources of pride. While learning to raise the tomatoes that remind him of his love for Lateesha, Curtis mentors Royce, a minor character resembling himself who claims to have been abused by his father. Finding that Royce would rather sleep on one of the gardener's grass clippings than return home, Curtis gives Royce money for food, buys him a sleeping bag and pitchfork, and makes him the garden's night watchman. Florence, the retired librarian who speaks in the closing chapter, is the character whose family lore gives the novel its name. She knows her great-grandparents walked from Louisiana to Colorado in 1859 to free themselves from the cotton culture. Her father, who told her of this, called them seedfolks, for they were the first members of their family to live in Colorado.

The arthritis in her hands has kept Florence from joining the gardeners, so she remains among their faithful watchers. (She once shames a man from taking a tomato just by daring him to go through with it.) We learn from Florence what we want most to know: that the garden has been renewed each spring, perhaps to this day.