Shelterwood

Olive (or Ollie) Augusta Peele is the protagonist of the novel’s 1909 timeline, although she appears in the 1990 timeline as well. In the 1990 timeline, Olive is in her nineties and is known as Budgie Blackwell. In 1909, Olive is a pre-teen or young teenage girl. 

In the 1909 timeline, Olive is characterized by her cleverness and persistence, and her journey begins when she realizes that she and Nessa need to leave Tesco Peele’s home before he can harm either of them further. As the children make their way in the world, Olive learns to use her cleverness in defense of others, specifically in politics. Although Olive doesn’t officially go into politics until her late 20s or early 30s, she develops into a budding politician while she and the other children are living in Shelterwood Camp. Figures like Mr. Brotherton and Mrs. Grube remark on Olive’s intelligence, charisma, and her way with words. As Valerie notes in the epilogue, Olive started as “a little girl determined to make her own world” and went on to join the Oklahoma State Legislature and gain a reputation for persuasiveness and tenacity (325). This tenacity sets Olive apart from the other children in the novel, and later from the other adults. Throughout the story, Olive is someone whom other people look to for guidance and help.

Although he does not appear in the novel, Lockridge is the antagonist of the 1909 timeline, and his actions reflect the novel’s thematic focus on Exploitation as a Tool of the Powerful. Eventually revealed to be Olive’s biological father, Lockridge is a wealthy and influential man in the area around Talihina, Oklahoma. He makes his money by manipulating the system of land assignment and guardianship in the region and by exploiting Choctaw children and families. He never appears in person, but his baleful influence has a deep impact on the children’s lives, and he employs others, such as Tesco Peele, to take more direct criminal actions on his behalf. Keyes Radley, whom Olive believed to be her father, worked from Lockridge and was tasked with either killing or engineering the disappearances of the Choctaw children whom Lockridge exploited. Thus, Lockridge is indirectly responsible for the deaths of the Choctaw children whom Keyes buries in the cave, and whose remains are finally discovered in the 1990 timeline.

Alton Parker is the antagonist of the 1990 timeline, although he, like Lockridge, is a shadowy figure who does not appear much in the main action of the novel until his crimes are finally revealed. He is a long-time resident of the Winding Stair region and uses the trust of his local community to conceal and obscure his illegal logging activity. Valerie eventually discovers that Alton Parker has been working in tandem with Braden and Sydney’s mother, Jade. He gains the right to “care” for the two children, and by doing so, he gains access to their family’s land and uses it to further his illegal logging activity, which also infringes upon the boundaries of the newly created national park. Alton Parker’s tactics of deceit, manipulation, and exploitation of vulnerable people mirror Lockridge’s tactics in the earlier timeline.

Nessa and Hazel Rusk are sisters and are of Choctaw heritage. When Lockridge assumes guardianship of Nessa and Hazel in order to take control of their land allotment, he tasks Keyes Radley with killing the children. However, Keyes opts to take them into his household instead, and they become Olive’s adopted sisters. After Keyes’s death, the girls are put under the charge of the abusive Tesco Peele, whom Olive suspects of sexually abusing Hazel. To escape this abuse, Hazel runs away from home in the 1909 timeline before the events of the novel begin, but she appears in the epilogue, having been reunited with her sister, Nessa. Nessa appears both as a child in the 1909 timeline and as an adult in Chapter 31 and the epilogue, which are set in 1990. Nessa and Hazel’s character arcs mirror that of Olive’s in the sense that all three girls begin as displaced and mistreated children and eventually find stability and embrace meaningful professional callings.