Hannah Madigan

The reader first meets Hannah as an eleven-year-old girl. The youngest in her family, she does not quite understand the dynamics between her siblings and her mother. In the opening chapter, she feels shame when the chicken is killed for Easter dinner, a mark of her softness and that she is not from a farm, despite growing up in a rural area. As the youngest in the family, she is angry at her own smallness. Though the reader sees her as a thoughtful but unsure child, her family sees her otherwise. They call her willful, disobedient, and messy.

As an adult, Hannah is very different from the child the reader encounters early in the book. Gone is the innocent child who doesn't understand her family dynamics. Instead, she is clearly an alcoholic, struggling to deal with her lack of a career in the theater and the new...