Ada Best

Ada Best is one of two protagonists in the novel. The narrative follows Ada as she and her brother come of age on an isolated cove in Newfoundland. When the reader first meets Ada she was a ten-year-old girl coping with the death of her mother and father. Ada did not have a formal education and learned little from her parents' before they died. Sarah Best did not openly talk to her daughter about coming of age, identity, or sexuality; it was not her "custom to offer instruction or commentary or to speak of the future beyond the season ahead" (103).

At the outset of the novel Ada considered her identity to be hinged on her relationship with Evered. Their mutual struggle for survival made them physically and emotionally reliant on one another. When Mary Orman asked Ada to assist with the birth of Martha, it was the...