Elizabeth (Lib) Wright

As the main character in the book, Lib is the lynchpin on which the entire plot depends. A nurse who has trained with Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, Lib is very proud of her training. She views the world through its lens—both as a reason to feel superior to the people around her and as a protective mechanism, as when she first realizes that she is beginning to be concerned for Anna’s welfare on a personal level rather than simply a medical one.

As an Englishwoman and a Protestant, Lib is an outsider in the village where she is working. She passes herself off as a widow, but in fact she was deserted by her husband only a little more than a year after their marriage, following the death of their infant daughter. Without familial or marital ties, Lib decided to go to...