Frank Drum is the middle child of Nathan and Ruth Drum. He is also the narrator of the novel, and recounts the events of the summer in 1961 as a 53-year-old history teacher living in St. Paul. Frank is thirteen years old in 1961: cynical, full of adolescent hormones, and questioning of his faith in the Christianity. He looks up to his older sister, Ariel, and puts up with his younger brother, Jake, though Jake is actually his best friend. Frank is perpetually curious and it’s this curiosity that allows him to unearth or otherwise come across many crucial plot points in the novel. It’s telling, however, that a simple act of fate—cutting his finger while in the Brandt’s farmhouse shed—is what leads him to deduce that Lise Brandt is Ariel’s killer, and that he doesn’t do so by his own intellectual machinations.

Nathan Drum is husband to Ruth Drum and father to Ariel, Frank, and Jake Drum. A Methodist minister, Nathan presides over services at three different churches in the New Bremen area, including at his own church, which is directly across the street from the Drum’s house. Nathan went to college and planned to become a hotshot lawyer but was drafted into World War II, where his choices lead to the deaths of many of his soldiers.