Wilhelmina “Willie” Upton

Wilhelmina “Willie” Upton is the novel’s protagonist and main point-of-view character. She was raised by her mother in Templeton, New York and never knew her father. Willie is studious, and hard-working. At the time of the main narrative, she is a 28-year-old archaeology graduate student at Stanford University. However, after an embarrassing incident involving a sexual relationship between Willie and her academic advisor, Willie has temporarily returned to Templeton while she decides whether to return to her graduate program. After her mother tells her that her father is actually a man in Templeton, Willie decides to undertake some heavy genealogical research to try to deduce the man’s identity.

Throughout the novel, she finds and reads various historical documents related to her family tree and the history of Templeton. She already knew that she was descended from the town’s founder, Marmaduke Temple, via two...