Odysseus O’Banion
Odysseus O’Banion commences his first-person narration with the same three words that initiate the Bible He immediately informs the reader he is a storyteller and this turns out to be something of an understatement. He is more familiarly known simply as Odie, but to a select few also goes by the self-chosen nickname Buck. He calls Minnesota home and is one of just two white students attending the Lincoln Indian Training School.
Albert O’Banion
Odie’s brother Albert is the other white student. He is also the smartest kid anybody in the school knows. He also adopts a nickname, but rather than taking his cue from a movie cowboy like his brother, he reveals a little of his famed smarts by choosing Norman because he’s “neither boy nor man.”
Moses Washington
Moses is better known as Mose and he adopts the alias Geronimo. This makes partial sense since Mose is a Sioux, but only partial sense because Geronimo was an Apache. Of course, it is important to note that he can’t actually say his self-chosen nickname because he is mute, but he communicates effectively through sign language. Mose is the best friend of Odie and Albert.
Emmaline Frost
Emmaline is the daughter of Cora Frost, one of the teachers at the school. Better known as Emmy, she adopts Emmett as her alias when she joins the three boys on the run. All four have kids have been terrorized and traumatized by at least one of the adults working at the school. The entire country is under the false impression that Emmy is with them because they kidnapped her, assaulted the assistant superintendent, Clyde Brickman, and stole all the money from the school safe.
Thelma Brickman
Clyde’s boss, the school’s iron-fisted chief superintendent, is the wife of Clyde. Her institution of a severe and often arbitrarily exercised system of corporal punishment is legendary among the students, but she seems to reserve a special place in her cold heart for Odie. Thelma’s discharge of delivering corporal punishment to the boys in the school found a perfect soulmate in Vincent DiMarco, the groundskeeper who eventually gets his just reward at the hands of, appropriately enough, Thelma’s favorite whipping boy.
