Before We Were Yours
Characters in Before We Were Yours
10 characters, main characters first.Main characters
Rill Foss
The eldest of the Foss children, twelve in 1939, who tries to keep her four younger siblings together after they are taken from their family's shantyboat.
Avery Stafford
A federal prosecutor from a prominent South Carolina family who comes home to support her senator father and stumbles on a buried piece of her family's past.
Antagonists
Georgia Tann
The real-life director of the Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis, who took poor children and placed them with paying families.
Supporting characters
Camellia Foss
One of Rill's younger sisters, taken from the Arcadia along with the rest of the Foss children.
Fern Foss
Rill's youngest sister, a small child whose care weighs on Rill throughout the 1939 story.
Gabion Foss
The youngest Foss child and the only boy, taken with his sisters from the river.
Lark Foss
One of Rill's younger sisters, among the five Foss children who live aboard the family shantyboat.
Briny Foss
The Foss children's father, a river man who teaches them arithmetic and the ways of life aboard the Arcadia.
Queenie Foss
The Foss children's mother, who teaches them to read aboard the family shantyboat.
Trent Turner III
A young man who helps Avery follow the trail of her family's past.