Lillian Benojee
Lillian Benojee is the matriarch of a clan that includes eight surviving children out of nine pregnancies which in turn produced eighteen grandchildren and one great-grandchild. She was larger than life during her nearly eighty years of existence that fronted a dominating spiritual belief which united both paganism and Christianity. Her passing cannot but help but take with it a certain sense of the past a connection to the ways of her tribe that the modern world seems desperately to want to lock in the archives.
Maggie Second
Maggie is one of those surviving eight children of Lillian and his risen to take over the status of Chief of Otter Lake, the First Nations community in which the story is set. She is a widow trying to raise a son reaching the full age of rebellion against anything that he can’t call his own. The widowhood has been in place three years now—the result of the rare boating accident which was not actually a shark attack—and Maggie is still young enough to, well, want something else in her life.
The Stranger
Like, for instance, the stranger who recently arrived in town atop an Indian motorcycle. (That is not a politically incorrect description, but the actual brand of the bike.) Even if he hadn’t come into town on a motorcycle he would still be hard to miss; not a lot of white guys with Thor-like blond blocks make into Otter Lake. Weirdly, though he calls himself John, the last name offered in the introductory phase often differs from one person to the next. Even more oddly, he seems able to communicate with animals and has an especially prickly relationship with raccoons. Odder still: there seems to be a very unexpected relationship tying him to Lillian even as he begins to fulfill Maggie’s desire to stop being a lonely widow.
Wayne Benojee
Wayne is another offspring of Lillian, sister of Maggie with whom he has basically an estranged relationship. He is a more than a bit of recluse and eccentric: he developed a Native American martial art all on his own. He has a strong tie to the traditional ways which are disappearing because of his close relationship with his mother. As a result, he is quick to sense that the stranger called John may in actuality be Nanabush, his culture’s version of the Loki-like Trickster archetype.
Virgil Second
Maggie’s son, Virgil has taken to skipping school and devoutly expresses and a complete lack of interest in the traditional ways of the tribe and its culture. Ultimately, it will only to be Virgil alone that John admits that he actually is Nanabush and it is John’s arrival which facilitates what might be called a reconciliation of affection between mother and son which occurred in wake of his father’s death.
