Lizabeth is a fourteen-year-old girl growing up during the Great Depression. She spends her summer days roaming with her younger brother and other neighborhood children, feeling a strange restlessness as she sits on the cusp of womanhood. She begins to grasp the dire economic circumstances surrounding her family but still participates in childish, sometimes malicious games to pass the time.

Miss Lottie is an elderly woman who lives in a dilapidated, unpainted shack with her adult son. She never receives visitors or leaves her property, enduring extreme poverty and isolation. Despite her grim surroundings, she devotes her remaining energy to fastidiously cultivating a patch of beautiful marigolds, a sharp contrast to the dust that covers the rest of the town.

Joey is Lizabeth's eleven-year-old brother. He is playful, bold, and fully entrenched in the innocence of childhood, serving as a contrast to Lizabeth's growing maturity. While he often instigates mischief—such as suggesting they bother the local residents—he lacks the destructive nerve that his older sister begins to exhibit.

Lizabeth's father is a previously joyful man who used to whisk his children onto his shoulders and sing through the house. The widespread unemployment of the Great Depression has stripped him of his livelihood and his pride, leaving him silent and deeply humiliated. His inability to secure work causes a profound emotional breakdown that shakes his family's foundation.

Lizabeth's mother is a soft and small woman who has been forced to become the primary breadwinner due to the local economic collapse. She works grueling hours in domestic service and brings home cast-off items from her employers to ensure her children survive. She assumes the role of emotional anchor for her despairing husband.

John Burke is Miss Lottie's adult son. He spends his days sitting in a rocking chair and does not speak. When the neighborhood children startle or mock him, he becomes enraged and chases them away, making him an easy target for their summer entertainment.