Andrew is Lizzy’s love interest and the other living point-of-view character in the novel. Andrew is a static character, remaining consistently virtuous throughout the novel, though Lizzy’s perception of him changes as she comes to trust him. He is the “boy next door” and works as the Moon Girl Farm’s handyman (271). Lizzy describes Andrew as having “war amber eyes” and being “ridiculously good-looking—his russet hair cropped close to his head, his face lean and tanned” (228, 50). As a young man, he became “bewitched” by Lizzy and tried to help her over the years with various issues (47), like her mother’s public outburst. He was the “hero she never wanted” but never got up the courage to ask her out (302). After Lizzy left town to go to college, Andrew went to Chicago and studied architecture.

Andrew came back to Salem Creek a couple years before Lizzy to care for his dying father. He stayed in town after his father’s death and continues to work on the farm because he promised Althea he would. To him, Lizzy is “a riddle he need[s] to solve” (116). He is more confident as an adult than as a teenager, and he is able to flirt with and seduce Lizzy. Even when Lizzy rebuffs his advances because she wants to uphold the family tradition and not marry, Andrew is patient. His patience pays off, as Lizzy chooses to marry him and have his child at the end of the novel.

Althea is dead before the novel begins. Davis includes her point of view through letters and journal entries; Althea’s words are the first ones that the reader encounters in the Prologue. She is described as short and skinny, and her psychic gift was “the ability to raise a nearly dead herb or flower with a touch and a few gentle words” (12). Althea raised her own daughter, Rhanna, and Rhanna’s daughter, Lizzy. After both of her descendants left the farm, Althea remained. She was hated by some citizens of Salem Creek, who made her the “perfect scapegoat” for the murders of Heather and Darcy (134).

However, other citizens know that Althea was “incapable of harming anyone” (80). She dedicated her life to helping others through herbal remedies sold at her apothecary, located on the farm. Andrew and her customers remain loyal to the Moon family even after Althea’s death. She was “always doing the right thing no matter what it cost, trusting things to work out like they should” (254). At the end of the novel, Lizzy learns that Althea regretted following the family tradition of not getting married. Althea turned down a marriage proposal from Peter, Rhanna’s father, and never told him she was pregnant. He died in the Marines. Sharing this story of lost love with Lizzy is what causes Lizzy to decide to break with tradition and marry Andrew.

Evvie was a close friend of Althea’s, and she is living at the Moon Girl Farm when Lizzy arrives there. Evvie is “tall and strangely beautiful, with a high forehead, broad cheeks, and salt-and-pepper hair shorn almost to the scalp” (22). Her family is from the West Indies, and she was living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, before coming to the farm. Evvie’s sister told her about Moon Girl Farm, and Althea started selling the honey and jewelry that Evvie makes. After exchanging letters, Evvie came to visit the farm and ended up staying. She set up her apiary near the greenhouse.

When Lizzy sees Evvie singing to her bees in Creole and holding them without any protective gear, Lizzy realizes that Evvie is “one of [them]” (96)—that she has spiritual powers like the Moon women. She is also a truth teller: “It wasn’t in her DNA to hold back when something needed saying” (201). Evvie gives Lizzy advice and support throughout the novel. During the climax—the fire in the barn—Evvie is with Rhanna at a new age festival selling wares to make money for the farm.

Evvie also sells her wares at the hardware store, which is run by Ben. Lizzy thinks that he is “handsome in a gnarled, outdoorsy way, like weathered oak” (278). As Evvie’s love interest, Ben mirrors Andrew, especially since Andrew’s father used to run the hardware store. Evvie and Ben end up moving in together at the end of the novel. Ben is a minor, static character.

Rhanna is Althea’s daughter and Lizzy’s mother. A dynamic, secondary character, her arc centers on redemption. At the beginning of the novel, Rhanna is living in California, where she earns her living by busking as a singer and reading tarot cards. She is also a visual artist who created the mural on the Moon Girl Farm’s large barn. Other people dismiss Rhanna as an irresponsible “hippy” who causes trouble; she had Lizzy as a teenager, and Althea raised Lizzy. Rhanna seems to be “happy bouncing from one calamity to the next, and to hell with whatever mess she might leave behind” (170). For instance, before she left for the West Coast, Rhanna cursed the town in the coffee shop in response to the accusations against her family regarding the murders of Heather and Darcy. Lizzy thinks of Rhanna as a person defined by “recklessness and rebellion” (189).

However, when Rhanna returns to Moon Girl Farm, Lizzy notices a change in her. It takes time for Rhanna to open up to Lizzy. In Chapter 29, Rhanna confesses that her psychic gift is seeing people’s deaths when she touches them. This caused her to develop haphephobia, an “aversion to being touched” (206). She also uses drugs and alcohol to escape the emotional burden of her gift. Like Lizzy, this gift started when she was 14. Rhanna uses the protective “rebel’s guise” to hide her emotional pain (255). Secretly, she fills The Book of Rhanna with drawings of her visions of the dead. Once Lizzy learns Rhanna’s secret and sees her book, she is able to forgive her for being an absent mother.

Luc is Lizzy’s boss, the son of the woman who founded Chenier Fragrances and took Lizzy under her wing. Lizzy describes Luc as someone who “ooze[s] charm […] look[s] like Johnny Depp without the eyeliner […] [and] retain[s] a hint of his mother’s French accent” (6). They had a casual relationship, which Lizzy broke off when she got promoted. However, Luc still has feelings for Lizzy and wants to be with her romantically. He is the third person in the novel’s love triangle and Andrew’s foil. Lizzy has to decide between a life with Luc in New York City and a life with Andrew in Salem Creek.

Overall, Luc is a static character who spends most of the novel pressuring Lizzy over the phone to return to New York. He is jealous of Andrew and offers to fix Lizzy’s financial problems so that she can come back to him. At the end of the novel, Lizzy abandons Luc and her job at Chenier Fragrances to be with Andrew.

Randall Summers is Salem Creek’s antagonistic chief of police and a static character. He is bigoted against the Moon family, in part because of his wife, Miriam, the organist at the First Congregational Church. They believe that the Moons are evil witches. Summers used Althea as a scapegoat for the murders and shut down the case. He is friends with the mayor, who wanted the case closed, and he hopes to be mayor himself.

Roger Coleman was the detective in charge of the murder case. He left the department after Summers shut down the case. Roger “wanted to get to the truth. Because that was how he was built” (90). The scents that Lizzy immediately detects on Roger are “polished shoes and freshly ironed cotton, which fit perfectly with a by-the-book detective […] a faint trace of wet leaves […] a dark, slick smell, one she’d always associated with grief or sadness” (79). Later, she learns that Roger lost his wife and 11-year-old son. Andrew is the one who connects Lizzy and Roger; he worked on Roger’s new house. However, Lizzy does the leg work on the case. At the end of the novel, Roger helps Helen get immunity after confessing that her dead husband, his brother, and their father are the murderers.

Hollis is dead before the novel begins. He was married to Helen, and they have a daughter named Kayla. Hollis helped Dennis drown Darcy after their father hit her on the head and thought that he had killed her. The guilt that Hollis felt about this led to his suicide. Dennis hid Hollis’s suicide note, preventing the police from discovering his role in the killings.

Dennis is Hollis’s brother and the main antagonist in the novel. In addition to helping Hollis drown Darcy, he choked Heather to death. After Hollis’s death, Dennis took a job working for Andrew to help support Helen. He also moved in with Helen and, fearing that she would talk about the murders, physically abuses her and threatens her daughter. When Lizzy starts asking about the murders, Dennis first leaves a witch doll in a noose with a Bible verse at the Moon Girl Farm as a threat.

Dennis escalates the threats against Lizzy by burning down her family’s apple orchard and breaking into the house with a knife. At the climax of the novel, Dennis threatens Lizzy in the barn with a Molotov cocktail. As he is about to light it, Lizzy throws a bottle of alcohol at him, which causing him to go up in flames. The barn burns down, and Dennis dies inside it.

Helen lives with Dennis and works at the grocery store. Because she was being abused, Helen didn’t speak out when her family-by-marriage blamed Althea for the murders. When Lizzy gets to town, she thinks that Helen is threatening her. However, Helen is truly trying to warn Lizzy about Dennis. After Dennis dies in the fire, Helen confesses that she knew about Dennis, Hollis, and their father’s crimes. She speaks to “the DA in exchange for immunity” (355), which is facilitated by Roger.