features a wide variety of characters, including the town thief, the town's most prominent woman, a suffragette, the ghost of an Egyptian princess, and members of the freshman class of Bluff City High School. Two freshmen are the major characters, Blossom Culp and Alexander Armsworth, but other classmates contribute to the story line.

Fourteen-year-old Blossom Culp is a loner, quick-witted, spunky, part-gypsy, very poor, and blessed with a gift: She is sensitive to other worlds and has, on occasion, traveled through time. Like other major female characters Peck has created, Blossom is intelligent and resourceful.

Blossom has a crush on classmate Alexander Armsworth, who also has the ability to understand the spirit world, although he constantly denies it. He lives on the right side of the tracks that separate his parents' property from the run-down shanty where Blossom and her mother live. Quite concerned...