Rowan, one of the novel’s two narrators and protagonists, is a 17-year-old young woman living in present-day Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is mixed-race, with a black mother and a white father. The Chase family is wealthy, and Rowan has been raised around primarily rich white people. Early in the novel, Rowan confesses that when she is around her white peers, she sometimes feels embarrassed about her own blackness. To Rowan, Greenwood is dangerous, a place where she doesn’t belong. Over the course of the novel, Rowan learns what it means to be comfortable with her blackness. She discovers that she wants to be better and help others, even putting her own well-being on the line with her willingness to testify about Arvin’s death. Rowan serves as a stand-in for every complacent person who has imagined that history is in the past and has no bearing on the present. She is a dynamic character who changes immensely over the course of the novel.

James is Rowan’s best friend. Like Rowan, he is mixed-race, but he is part black and part Native American, so he does not have white privilege. Unlike Rowan, James’ family is poor. He goes to school with Rowan, but he is on scholarship.