Cassie is a young widow struggling to process the sudden loss of her husband in a car accident 15 months prior. A former writer with a background in history and journalism, she has abandoned her career and fallen into a state of emotional stagnation that affects her ability to care for her home and her traumatized daughter. Her move to Illinois provides her with a new focus as she discovers and investigates her grandmother's hidden journal.

Katya, known as Bobby in the present day, is an elderly woman experiencing early signs of age-related cognitive changes. Her suppressed trauma surfaces through hoarding food, wandering off, and murmuring in Ukrainian. In her youth in Ukraine, she is a spirited, fiercely loyal young woman whose life is violently disrupted by Soviet occupation and the subsequent engineered famine, prompting her to document the atrocities in a hidden journal.

Nick is a firefighter and a first-generation Ukrainian-American living next door to Bobby. Having lost his parents in a house fire and recently his grandmother, he possesses a deep, personal understanding of grief. Fluent in Ukrainian, he becomes essential in helping Cassie translate the old journal, offering a patient and steady presence during her emotional crisis.

Alina is Katya's older sister and a calming, traditional presence in the family. She desires a quiet, domestic life with her husband, Kolya, representing the idyllic Ukrainian family structure that the Soviet regime systematically destroys. In the contemporary timeline, her name mysteriously resurfaces when Birdie claims to speak with a presence on the living room couch.

Kolya is a pragmatic, hard-working villager and Alina's devoted husband. When Soviet forces tear their community apart and orchestrate a terror-famine, his focus narrows entirely to the physical survival of his immediate household. He takes practical, sometimes dangerous risks to secure resources when others fall into despair.

Birdie is Cassie's five-year-old daughter. She develops selective mutism after surviving the car accident that killed her father, internalizing the profound trauma of the event. After moving into Bobby's house, she begins to recover her voice, forming an unusual and seemingly supernatural connection to a figure she calls Alina.

Comrade Ivanov is the leader of the Soviet activists sent to Katya's village. He enforces agricultural collectivization with terrifying bureaucratic detachment, seizing property, identifying wealthy peasants as "kulaks," and overseeing the brutal persecution of any villagers who resist the state's quotas.

Prokyp is an opportunistic local villager who aligns himself with the invading Soviet forces. He uses the occupation to settle personal scores and indulge his cruelest impulses, demonstrating how the regime's policies empower corruption and turn starving neighbors against one another.

Anna is Cassie's mother and Bobby's daughter. Practical, caring, and occasionally overbearing, she frequently tries to manage Cassie's grief recovery. Having grown up completely unaware of the Holodomor or her mother's traumatic history in Ukraine, she is baffled by Bobby's eccentricities and strict rules regarding food.

Pavlo is Katya's childhood friend and first love. Confident and brave, he represents the bright, hopeful future of the village before the arrival of the Soviet forces. He actively opposes the requisitioning of their community and charges Katya with documenting their experiences in a leather-bound journal to preserve their true history.

Mama is the mother of Katya and Alina. She serves as a strong, pragmatic matriarch who attempts to hold her family together as Soviet policies systematically dismantle their traditional farming community. When tragedy strikes the village, she forces her daughters to prioritize survival and seize whatever happiness remains available to them.

Tato is the father of Katya and Alina. He is a hardworking, traditional farmer who attempts in vain to shield his daughters from the encroaching political violence of Stalin's collectivization. He possesses a grim, realistic understanding of Moscow's historical oppression of Ukraine.