Ava Jackson

Ava is a 34-year-old mixed race single mother who has just moved in with her white grandmother Martha at the beginning of the novel. She had previously been working as a legal secretary, but Martha agreed to pay her more than her salary and she hoped to save enough money to buy a house of her own. Ava has a 12-year-old son named King. Ava has always prided herself on being independent, and she preferred the notion of moving in with Martha rather than her mother Gladys because she believed Gladys would judge her for needing help. Ava is also fairly wounded by the fact that her father was never in her life, and by her husband leaving her to pursue other women shortly after she gave birth to King.

Over the course of the novel, Ava grows more resilient and more capable of standing up for...