Mary Alice is a fifteen-year-old girl from Chicago who relocates to a small country town to live with her grandmother during the 1937 recession. Accustomed to modern city amenities like telephones and indoor plumbing, she initially struggles with the rustic lifestyle and feels isolated in her new environment. She relies on her radio to maintain a connection to the outside world. Gradually, she begins to understand the local customs and gains a deep appreciation for her grandmother's unconventional survival methods.

Grandma Dowdel is an elderly, physically imposing widow who lives alone and relies on secret, grueling labor like trapping foxes to maintain her finances during the Depression. She publicly eschews sentimental displays while privately engineering elaborate schemes that punish local bullies and aid the disadvantaged. She ignores conventional property rules, freely confiscating neighbors' resources to supply community charity events.

Mildred is a rough, intimidating classmate who targets newly arrived students. She is recognizable by her mismatched blue and green eyes, a well-known family trait in the region. She boasts loudly about her family's outlaw reputation and attempts to use physical threats to steal from weaker children.

Wilhelmina is the flashy, entitled wife of the town banker and president of the local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter. She weaponizes her claimed aristocratic lineage to order others around, demanding free labor for her exclusive tea parties while looking down on the rural working class. She harbors sensitive secrets regarding her family background.

Arnold is a Paris-educated artist from New York City, hired by the Works Progress Administration to paint a mural in the local post office. Finding the building entirely too small for his project, he takes a room at Grandma Dowdel's house and collects his government stipend anyway. Unused to small-town life, he spends his days painting canvases in the attic.

Royce is a tall, handsome senior who relocates to the town mid-year. He wears corduroy pants and argyle sweaters, drawing immediate attention from the female student body. He recognizes a shared outsider status with Mary Alice, bonding over their mutual displacement.

Joey is Mary Alice's seventeen-year-old older brother. Driven away from home by the harsh economics of the Great Depression, he works out West planting trees for the Civilian Conservation Corps. He previously spent his summers visiting Grandma Dowdel alongside Mary Alice.

Ina-Rae is a timid, underfed-looking student at the local school. Accustomed to being ignored or marginalized by wealthier classmates, she offers Mary Alice practical advice on surviving the classroom's social hierarchy. She becomes a loyal confederate in orchestrating schoolhouse pranks.

Carleen is the snobbish, privileged daughter of the town's grain merchant. Accustomed to getting her way, she vies for the lead role in the Christmas pageant and aggressively pursues the newest boy in school. She constantly attempts to assert her superiority over the other girls.

Miss Butler teaches English and home economics. She organizes school functions, including the Halloween refreshment table and the annual nativity play. As a single woman in a small town, she takes a strong interest in the arrival of a cultured artist from New York.

August Fluke, Jr. is the principal's son and an active participant in the town's prolonged Halloween mischief. He leads a gang of boys targeting local outhouses but falls victim to one of Grandma's homemade booby traps, leaving behind a pocketknife bearing his initials.

Principal Fluke is the overworked school administrator. Due to the severe economic downturn, he must also serve as the school's janitor, athletic coach, and shop teacher. He attempts to maintain order but remains ignorant of his own son's misbehavior.

Old Man Nyquist is an elderly retired farmer who owns a large, productive pecan tree. He maintains a bitter, antisocial reputation that alienates his neighbors, leaving him completely isolated when severe weather strikes the town.

Reba Pensinger is a local resident who grows exceptionally large pumpkins. She enjoys community events and readily praises the quality of the local baking, completely unaware that the pies she is eating were made from her own stolen crops.

Mrs. Abernathy is an impoverished, exhausted woman who cares full-time for her son, a severely wounded World War I veteran. Refusing to send him to a veterans' hospital, she relies heavily on local charity events for survival.

Effie is a social outcast and longtime associate of the Dowdel household. She frequently finds herself caught up in the town's social crossfire and relies on Grandma Dowdel's hospitality when disaster strikes her own property.

Mae is an elderly town resident with an encyclopedic memory for local history and nineteenth-century adoptions. Despite her age and tendency to fall asleep in chairs, she loudly disrupts high-society functions with uncomfortable historical facts.

Maxine is the local postmistress. Described as man-hungry, she develops a sudden interest in modeling for art when an unmarried painter arrives in town, leading to a highly public scandal involving attic wildlife.

L. J. Weidenbach is the town banker and the wealthiest man in the community. Despite his financial status, he is subjected to Grandma Dowdel's aggressive sliding-scale charity pricing.