Born in 1833, Tobias MacIvey is a tall, wiry farmer from Georgia who relocates to the Florida frontier in 1858 with his wife, Emma, and infant son, Zech, to avoid the Civil War. “He did not run before because he was afraid of fighting or dying. It was not that at all. He simply could make no sense of a war pitting countrymen against each other, and he wanted no part of it if he could avoid it” (33). While Tobias’s opposition to the war is never explored beyond this passage, it is in keeping with the man’s lack of prejudice and harmonious attitude toward his fellow man. In his efforts to build a homestead and business to support his family, Tobias is driven less by material concerns and more by a quest to achieve a measure of human dignity and meaning to his life. He tells Emma:

All those times me and Zech chased some scrawny cow through the woods and didn’t catch it, it wasn’t the money. I want the money now for you and Zech. For me, I guess I just been trying to prove something to myself. All my life when I tried to do something worth anything I never made it, not here or back in Georgia.