Florentine Lacasse
This young woman has been tasked to support her entire family with her meager income at a lunch deli, but she's really more interested in Jean Levesque, the young machinest who comes by the shop to flirt with her.
Daniel
Daniel is Florentine's younger brother who is sick throughout the novel. Eventually, he is hospitalized by the illness, which ends up being leukemia.
Rose-Anna
The family matriarch who worries about her family. She is pregnant after all with her twelfth child. One day, she asks her husband to borrow a work truck to drive her back to her family's land in the country. She discovers that city life is more difficult than her family's rural life.
Azarius
The patriarch who disappoints as a provider throughout the entire novel. He gets fired for stealing a truck from his workplace, even though he always planned on returning it. When France is taken over by Germany, Azarius finds a new employment with the British army fighting the Nazis.
Jean Levesque
This young flirt keeps coming to hang out with Florentine, but when Florentine finally gets the house all to herself, and Jean shows up, he can't help but feel disgusted by Florentine's poverty. They have sex, and he leaves, never to be heard from again.
Emmanuel Letourneau
But, Florentine has this other suitor, a military officer who has been courting her for some time. Finally, when she turns up pregnant, she accepts his proposal and convinces herself the baby is his.
