Beyah, a 19-year-old recent high school graduate, is the narrator and protagonist of the story. She is tall, pretty, and quite thin, with brown hair. A volleyball prodigy, she has earned a full athletic scholarship to Penn State University. She lives in a trailer park in an unnamed rural area of Kentucky with her mother, Janean. The two are poverty-stricken, something Beyah attributes to her mother being an unemployed, chemically dependent alcoholic. She portrays her mother as being promiscuous, cynical, and bitter about life. Beyah’s father, a financial advisor who pays the rent on their mobile home each month, lives in Texas. The two have not seen each other in two years.

Though she is too poor to have a telephone, television, computer, or vehicle, Beyah envisions herself as a resourceful self-provider. Determined not to end up like her mother, Beyah prides herself on her work ethic, working all the extra hours she can as a cashier at McDonald’s. When she leaves the trailer park to move to the Houston area with her father, she takes virtually all her possessions in a backpack. Initially, her goal is simply to spend the summer with her father before heading to college in August.