Agatha Christie

Agatha is Archie’s wife and Rosalind’s mother. Her character is based on the world-famous writer, Agatha Christie. At the start of the novel, Agatha is naive and impressionable. She falls for Archie’s charms and devotes herself to making him happy. Agatha’s innocence can best be observed when she says, “Even worse, imagine if my dance partner was the one—our Fate, as my friends and I liked to describe prospective husbands—and had been distracted from his attentions” (5). Agatha clings to romantic notions of fate and matrimony as a means of giving her life purpose. She later finds a more gratifying sense of purpose in her writing.

During the war, Agatha works as a nurse. She is one of the best nurses at her hospital and is proud of her skills: “The other nurse aides, mostly well-bred girls like myself, couldn’t tolerate...