Abbad
Abbad is an Ethiopian Muslim trained to fly planes by his best friend Jimmy. Abbad deliberately crash a plane into downtown Chicago along with his wife and child.
Art
Art is an FBI agent who works with Hank Storm. Art genuinely cares about Hank, but refuses to allow his partner’s confusion to interfere with their work. Art heartlessly kills Junior, a young Native American.
Bow Boy
Bow Boy is a five-year-old Indian child who is saved from a U.S. Calvary attack by Small Saint.
Crazy Horse
Crazy Horse is the famous half-Native American, half-Caucasian leader of the Oglala Lakota tribe. He led tribal forces to victory against the U.S. Calvary at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Detective Eyeglasses
This detective is an associate of Officer Dave who interrogates Zits after he is arrested for possessing an unregistered firearm.
Edgar
Edgar is one of Zits’s Native American foster fathers. He was initially welcoming to Zits, but turned away after Zits defeated him in a model airplane race.
Elk
Elk is a member of the activist group IRON who turned traitor and worked for the FBI. An associate of Horse, Elk helps torture Junior.
Zits's father
Zits’s unnamed Native American father left his wife and child on the day of Zits’s birth to become a homeless alcoholic. He is also Zits's fifth and final transformation.
General Mustache
The general serves with the U.S. Calvary that leads the attack on an Indian camp, under Gus.
George Armstrong Custer
General Custer is the U.S. Calvary commander who famously defied orders to wait for backup and was then defeated by the coalition of Native American tribes at the Battle of Little Bighorn, aka “Custer’s Last Stand.”
Gus
Gus is an associate of the U.S. Calvary of the 19th century. An Indian tracker, he is also Zits’s third transformation.
Hank Storm
Hank is an FBI agent from the mid 1970s. He has killed at least one person, and works with Art against IRON. He is Zits’s first transformation.
Helga
Helga is Jimmy’s mistress.
Horse
Horse is a member of the activist group IRON who turned traitor and worked for the FBI. An associate of Elk, Horse helps torture Junior.
Indian boy
The unnamed Indian boy is a mute child of a warrior at the Battle of Little Bighorn. He is Zits’s second transformation.
Jimmy
An adulterous pilot, Jimmy cheats on his wife Linda, with Helga. He is Zits's fourth transformation, and plagued by the betrayal of Abbad.
Justice
Justice is a seventeen-year-old boy whom Zits meets in jail. He convinces Zits to commit murder.
Linda
Linda is Jimmy’s angry wife. She throws him out of the house after she catches him with another woman.
Little Big Man
Little Big Man is the Oglala Lakota leader at the Battle of Little Bighorn. He may have been involved in the murder of Crazy Horse.
Mary
Mary is Robert's wife, and Zits's final foster mother.
Zits's mother
Zits’s loving, unnamed Irish American mother died of breast cancer when Zits was six. Her death leaves a huge absence in his life.
Officer Dave
Officer Dave is a kind police officer who is sympathetic to Zits’s plight. He later finds Zits a home with his brother, Robert.
Pam
Pam is a kind stranger who tries to help Zits’s father while Zits embodies him. Paul is her boyfriend.
Paul
Paul is a kind stranger who tries to help Zits’s father while Zits embodies him. Pam is his girlfriend.
Robert
Robert is a firefighter married to Mary, and Zits's final foster father. He is also Officer Dave's brother.
Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull is the prophetic and legendary leader of the Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux, and a leader at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Small Saint
Small Saint is a sixteen-year-old U.S. Calvary solider who saves Bow Boy instead of following orders during Zits's third transformation.
Zits
Zits is the fifteen-year-old orphan protagonist of the novel. He is half-Native American, half-Irish, but identifies with neither culture. After committing a heinous act of violence, Zits is mysteriously transported back in time. He inhabits the bodies of five other men at various points in history, and learns of his own shortcomings through their trial and errors.
Zooey
Zooey is Zits’s aunt, who temporarily raised him after his mother died. Zooey’s unnamed boyfriend sexually abused Zits as a child.
newest foster mother
The foster mother with whom Zits lives at the beginning of the novel is described as white, fat, and like an evil step-mother from a fairytale.
newest foster father
The foster father with whom Zits lives at the beginning of the novel is described as smelling like beer and onions.
Junior
Junior is a young Indian who is tortured and killed by Horse, Elk and Art.
Hank's family
Hank's wife and children enter Hank Storm's hospital room while Zits is in the man's body.
Indian boy's father
The father of the mute Indian boy whom Zits becomes in his second transformation initially pleases Zits, but then upsets him when he demands the boy attack a soldier.
Zits's grandfather
Zits's grandfather was a bully who convinced Zits's father that he was not "worth shit."
Aunt Zooey's boyfriend
The unnamed boyfriend of Zits's first foster-mother (his only living relative), this man sexually molested Zits until the boy tried to set him on fire, after which he left Zooey.
