Salamanca, or “Sal,” is a 13-year-old girl and the book’s main character. She’s of partially Native American ancestry, and her name is her parents’ mistaken version of “Seneca”—the tribe her maternal great-great-grandmother belonged to. Sal has also inherited her mother Chanhassen’s long black hair, as well as her affinity with the natural world: The very first sentence of the novel reads, “Gramp says that I am a country girl at heart, and that is true” (1). Although Sal doubts it, she’s also quite brave and resourceful. When her grandmother’s condition deteriorates and she’s hospitalized in Coeur d’Alene, Sal drives to Lewiston alone—a decision that becomes even more courageous in retrospect, once the reader learns her mother died in a crash on that same stretch of road.

As the novel opens, Sal is somewhat estranged from her father, John Hiddle; she’s unhappy with his decision to move from Kentucky to Ohio, and is suspicious of his friendship with Margaret Cadaver. These frustrations mask a deeper problem: Sal’s inability to accept her mother’s death. Although Sal knows the truth about her mother on some level, she doesn’t fully believe her mother is gone until she visits her mother’s grave.