Cleo Brandt

Cleo is Pearl and Phil's three-year-old daughter. She calls her Chinese grandma "Ha-bu."

Pearl Brandt

Pearl is Winnie's forty-year-old daughter. She lives fifty miles away from Winnie with her husband, Phil, and their two daughters. She does not feel the same impulse to be with her family for gatherings as her mother does, but she feels a sense of duty to be present.

Pearl works as a linguist and speech therapist for mentally challenged children. She has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis but has not told her mother. She has, however, told Helen, who claims to be dying and thus insists that Pearl tell her secret to her mother.

Although Pearl has always believed that Jimmy was her father, she learns from her mother's story that her father is probably Wen Fu.

Phil Brandt

Phil is Pearl's husband. Phil is a forty-threeyear- old Caucasian man who has...