Bud Caldwell

Bud Caldwell is the ten-year-old African-American orphan and main character/narrator of the story. The entire novel is told from Bud's perspective, from his first years at home with his mother to his tenth year when he finds the family he had once lost. Bud becomes an orphan early on in his life, due to his mother's unexpected death from illness. Bud never knew his father and his mother had never told him much about him. This huge question in Bud's life becomes the drive for his life's journey, as he finds that the orphanage is not the permanent place for him. His first clue is when his short stay at a foster home, the Amos household, goes awry. Finding the only child of the family to be quite a bully forces Bud to defend himself, which causes him to be punished into solitary confinement in a...