Enoch Wallace
The protagonist of the novel is a Civil War veteran named Enoch Wallace. He was born in 1840 yet 124 years later he appears barely to have aged at all since the end of the war. He has also lived in the same small house on a backward farm where he grew up in Wisconsin. What literally nobody else on earth knows is that Enoch’s little ramshackle shack of a home is, on the inside, a way station for interstellar travelers from across the universe.
Claude Lewis
A member of the U.S. intelligence agency, Claude Lewis, becomes the first person of any significance to take note of the strangeness of Enoch’s existence. His research discovered that Enoch was one of the first men in Wisconsin to rally to Lincoln’s call for volunteers to fight the dreaded Confederates and he even managed to survive the battle of Gettysburg. So how could still be alive all these years without seeming to age and, what’s more, how could he manage to avoid notoriety under such bizarre conditions?
Mary and David
Enoch reaches the point where there is only one neighbor he actually engages with, having been shunned by the rest. In order to maintain a bit of sanity in the face of overwhelming loneliness, Enoch creates two “shadow” people who appear to him when he needs the company of actual earthlings. Mary is a sort of composite of handful of women he knew in his past while David represents the company of men engaged in battle together, always appearing fully attired in his Union dress blues.
Ulysses
Over the decades, Enoch gets to meet many envoys from other worlds and establish varying levels of familiarity. Some come and go without a word and many stop for the delicacy that is apparently not available galaxy-wide: a cup of coffee. One that Enoch develops a very close relationship earns the name Ulysses because his species do not themselves require names. Ulysses becomes the space traveler with whom Enoch develops a true friendship and it is from him that he learns much about the world beyond earth. Since there is no real plot or even much of a conflict to speak of, it is this conversational engagement that stimulates much of the narrative.
Lucy Fisher
Lucy is the deaf-mute daughter and sister in a family of inbred troglodytes living nearby. The father and brother both physically abuse the poor girl and ultimately Lucy becomes the nearest thing to a real-life companion to Enoch though, as a result of her communication disabilities, she is in some ways just another shadow person.
