Two Feathers
Two Feathers is a young Cherokee woman who is the titular character and protagonist of the novel. She is from Oklahoma but is spending the summer of 1926 in Nashville working at the Glendale Park Zoo. Her employment—a popular attraction of the times—involves riding atop her beloved horse Ocher on the forty-feet drop from a platform into a pool of water. But one day something goes horribly, tragically wrong.
Clive Lovett
Clive Lovett manages the Glendale Park Zoo where Two Feathers and Ocher briefly stage their stunt. He is the one who manages to save Two Feathers following the accident. Beloved by genteel Nashville, idolized by kids, and beloved by his animals, Clive is, alas, much sicker than the story of the cold he is telling lets on.
Crawford
Crawford is a worker at the park and the only human that Ocher loves nearly as much as Two Feathers. Unfortunately, he is also black, which means gets little respect, lower wages, and suspicion tossed his way by just about everybody but Two. Instead of heading back home to Oklahoma after the tragedy, she sticks around and develops a close bond with Crawford.
Jack Older
Despite his name, Jack Older has actually been hired while attending college to work at the park, a stranger fact not lost on Crawford or Two Feathers. Jack is white, a native southerner, and has his eye set on conquest. He has decided that Two Feathers is worthy of his lustful attention regardless of the fact that she is just an Indian from the Okies.
Little Elk
Little Elk is another Indian character and who seems to pay special attention to Two Feathers as if watching over her like some guardian angel. What that something might be is not entirely clear since Clive is the only person who can actually see Little Elk, but he definitely is not happy with how the Glendale park was constructed on the site of burial mounds.
