Olive is a retired math teacher living in the coastal town of Crosby, Maine. She is a large and blunt woman whose unpredictable temper heavily influences her household and community interactions. Despite her abrasive exterior and rigid refusal to apologize, she possesses a keen empathy for those dealing with isolation and mental illness, an awareness rooted in her own father's struggle with depression.

Henry is Olive's husband and the town's dedicated pharmacist. He maintains a polite and accommodating demeanor that contrasts sharply with his wife's bluntness. He frequently yields to Olive's difficult behavior while quietly feeling suffocated by it, finding solace in his workplace and developing intense emotional attachments to people he feels need his protection.

Christopher is Olive and Henry's only child, working as a podiatrist. He shares some of his mother's depressive tendencies but seeks to escape her overbearing influence by moving across the country. He struggles with the legacy of his strict upbringing and manages complicated relationships as an adult, often clashing directly with Olive's inflexible worldview.

Jack is an elderly, Harvard-educated widower who retired to Crosby. He grieves the recent loss of his wife and maintains a highly strained relationship with his gay daughter. Despite his conservative political views and initial arrogance, he develops an unexpected bond with Olive based on their shared fears of mortality and isolation.

Angie is a former child prodigy who works as a piano player in a bar. In her fifties, she manages intense stage fright by drinking heavily before her performances. She carries the lingering trauma of her controlling mother and feels trapped by the stagnation of her long-term romantic affair.

Nina is a young woman struggling with severe anorexia. She and her boyfriend represent a free-spirited lifestyle that captures the attention of the town's older residents. Her sudden legal troubles and rapidly declining health draw the concern and intervention of several locals who try to save her.

Denise is a young assistant at Henry's pharmacy. She is conservative and efficient, relying heavily on Henry's professional guidance. When she experiences a sudden tragedy early in her marriage, she becomes the primary focus of Henry's protective instincts.

Kevin is a former student of Olive's who returns to Crosby as an adult. He trains to be a psychiatrist but battles severe bipolar disorder and intense isolation. He contemplates his life while sitting near the marina, haunted by his mother's suicide and his inability to find a place where he fits in.

Harmon is a hardware store owner who feels disconnected from his wife, Bonnie, now that their children have grown and left home. He seeks comfort in a quiet, ongoing relationship with a local widow and finds renewed paternal purpose when he attempts to help a young woman in serious health trouble.

Daisy is a widow whose husband died three years prior. She lives a quiet life and shares a gentle, intimate connection with Harmon. She readily opens her home to a young woman named Nina when the girl needs a safe place to stay.

Jane is a former school nurse in her mid-seventies who recently suffered a minor heart attack. She deeply values the long-term stability of her marriage to Bob but harbors intense fears about aging and mortality, which bubble to the surface after a local concert brings up unsettling memories.

Bob is Jane's elderly husband. He relies heavily on his wife for emotional stability but harbors a secret about a past infidelity that threatens to disrupt the peaceful final years of their life together.

Louise is a formerly wealthy, strikingly beautiful woman who became a recluse after her son committed a horrific murder. She is highly perceptive and capable of seeing straight through Olive's emotional defenses when Olive visits her dim, abandoned-looking house.

Marlene is a former student of Olive's who recently lost her husband, Ed, to a terminal illness. She is a dedicated wife who maintained a facade of normalcy during her husband's decline, only to face a humiliating revelation from a relative during his wake.

Winnie is an eleven-year-old girl caught in the middle of her family's dysfunction after her sister's wedding is called off. She is observant and constantly tries to act as a peacekeeper between her volatile mother and her heartbroken older sister.

Anita is Winnie and Julie's mother, known by neighbors to be mentally unstable. She is controlling, volatile, and reacts with extreme hostility when her daughter's fiancé abruptly breaks off the wedding.

Rebecca is a young, unemployed woman who lives with her boyfriend. Raised by a strict minister father after her mother abandoned them, she struggles with kleptomania, a compulsive need to talk, and a desire to rebel against her restrictive upbringing.

Jim is a former fellow teacher at Olive's school who died years ago in a car accident. He represents a profound, unspoken loss in Olive's life, having shared a deep emotional connection with her that she relies on in her memories.

Suzanne is Christopher's first wife. She is confident and somewhat presumptuous, causing immediate friction with Olive by openly criticizing Christopher's difficult childhood and triggering Olive's vindictive side on the wedding day.

Ann is Christopher's second wife. She is pregnant, has two children from previous relationships, and employs a relaxed, somewhat chaotic approach to parenting that contrasts sharply with Olive's rigid expectations when Olive visits the city.