Emily

Emily is a fourteen-year-old African American girl; she is the narrator and the principle protagonist of the novel. Emily describes herself as typical in most respects. Physically she has long legs and large feet. She is an only child, the daughter of Diane and her unnamed father. Emily and her parents live in Cleveland, Ohio, and have since her birth. Every summer of Emily's life, her mother has taken her to spend the summer with her maternal grandmother Ola Werren, who lives in a small yellow house in Little Rock, California, in the middle of the California desert. Emily is a vegetarian, believing it is morally wrong to eat animals. She is also a daydreamer; during winters in school in Cleveland, she daydreams often of the desert. During summers at her grandmother's house in the desert, she daydreams of various things. Emily naturally is somewhat introverted but personable...