Daniel

Daniel Gluck is a 101-year-old former musician, songwriter, and primary love interest of Elisabeth. Daniel is utterly kind, deeply philosophical, and has a broad appreciation for the arts and for culture at large. Reeling from heartbreak over Pauline from the 1960s on, Daniel befriends the child Elisabeth and later comes to love the adult Elisabeth. It is Daniel’s exposing of Elisabeth to culture and philosophy that prompts Elisabeth to study Art History in college, and to become a professor. Daniel spends most of the novel confined to his deathbed, drifting in and out of consciousness, memory, and straddling the world between Earth and Heaven (though he purports not to believe in God). Daniel rallies his strength at the end of the novel to be able to converse again with Elisabeth, and his thoughts are only to ask after her.

Elisabeth

Elisabeth Demand is a 32-year-old young woman...