Irene

Irene narrates the events of the novel from Florida, some eight years after quitting drugs for good and about 11 years after meeting Luce, making her about 30 years old as she looks back on the events depicted. She is a native of Anklewood and appears to have had a mostly happy and uneventful childhood with parents who were both full-time loom operators at the mill, but when the mill was closed and its finances gutted, Irene's parents lost their insurance and retirement and the family's fortune's changed. Irene's mother develops into an alcoholic who must resort to stealing food from Wal-Mart and borrowing money from Irene, and her father whom she loved more than anyone develops cancer that is mistreated and results in his early death.

When Irene was 19, her mother moved out of town to be with her sister after a period of coping poorly with Irene's father's...