Stella Mills is the 11-year-old protagonist. While the novel occasionally departs into an omniscient viewpoint, it is primarily told in third person point-of-view limited to Stella’s observations and thoughts, with brief, interspersed chapters that either include or are entirely comprised of Stella’s own first-person writing. Stella has black hair and compares her skin to the “color of rum.” Her home is a small house near Kilkenny Pond; she lives with her parents and eight-year-old brother JoJo.

Stella is a nickname for Estelle; both Estelle and Stella derive from Latin for star. Stella does not indicate that she knows the derivation of her name, but she says her name “reminds [her] of the stars” (66). Drawn to the nighttime, Stella uses post-bedtime solitude and the openness of the dark outdoors to welcome inspiration for writing and thinking. Key events in Stella’s story happen “by starlight” as well, including the opening scene (the cross-burning) and climax (saving Paulette). Paradoxically, Stella discovers the truth about herself and others in the dark.

Stella is a witness to and messenger of the story’s opening scene and inciting incident, in which she sees a “practice” cross-burning by local members of the Ku Klux Klan.