Wong Yun serves as the novel’s deuteragonist, a round and dynamic character who embodies the living history that her granddaughter seeks to understand. Yun’s story, told through her own Reforged pencil entries, is one of resilience, trauma, and the heavy burden of secrets. Raised in the Phoenix Pencil Company during the wars in Shanghai, she is shaped by loss, betrayal, and the constant threat of violence. Her identity is inextricably linked to the magical power of Reforging, a gift she views as both a tool for survival and a source of immense pain and guilt. For most of her adult life, she suppresses this past, choosing to leave behind her fractured relationship with Meng and the moral compromises she made to survive.

Yun is characterized by her deep, fierce love for Monica, a love that she expresses through quiet acts of service rather than words. Her diagnosis with memory loss creates the central urgency of the narrative, forcing her to confront her fading memories and decide what legacy she will leave behind. This internal conflict drives Yun to write her story for Meng and eventually teach Monica the art of Reforging, a decision she makes out of a desire for her granddaughter to have a connection to her heritage. The woman’s choice echoes her own grandmother’s reasoning for allowing Yun to learn the family secret: “Teach her so she can know where she comes from, and what she can do” (72). This act of passing on the family’s power marks a significant shift in her development, as she moves from protecting Monica from the past to entrusting her with its full complexity. Yun’s character is central to the theme of Telling the Truth to Heal Family Wounds, demonstrating that memory is not a private possession but a collective, often traumatic, legacy that must be shared for healing to begin. Her wartime narrative adds weight to King’s warnings about contemporary surveillance capitalism, and her arc ultimately asserts the enduring power of a story told from the heart.

Louise Sun acts as the primary catalyst for the plot and serves as both a foil and a romantic interest for Monica. A charismatic, ambitious, and seemingly open Princeton student, Louise initially appears to be the opposite of the introverted Monica. Her online presence is vast, a form of “radical sharing” that allows Monica’s EMBRS search to find her and, through her, a connection to Meng. Louise’s passion for her “memory work” project, an academic endeavor to archive the stories of underrepresented women from wartime Shanghai, drives her to connect with both Meng and Yun. This ambition, however, also creates the central conflict in her relationship with Monica, raising questions about her motivations and the ethics of her work.

Louise is a round and dynamic character whose journey involves learning the difference between performative openness and genuine vulnerability. While she easily shares surface-level details of her life, she is guarded about her family pressures and the deeper insecurities that drive her. Her interactions with Monica and the Tsai family force her to confront the human cost of storytelling. She learns that a person’s history is not simply data to be collected for a thesis but a deeply personal and often painful inheritance.

Her argument with Monica about the ethics of EMBRS and her own project marks a turning point, forcing her to reconcile her academic goals with the real emotional impact on the people she studies. Louise represents a bridge between Yun’s magical world and Monica’s digital one, attempting to use modern archival theory to preserve the kind of visceral history that Reforging allows. Her growth lies in her shift from an archivist seeking a story to a partner who understands that true connection is built on mutual trust, respect, and a willingness to share one’s own vulnerabilities, not just collect those of others.

Chen Meng is a pivotal minor character who functions as a mentor for Lousie and Monica and as a foil to Yun. Though she’s physically absent for most of the novel, her presence looms large in her cousin’s memories, and her influence is felt through her actions in the present. In Yun’s historical narrative, Meng is portrayed as pragmatic, courageous, and more rebellious than the often-hesitant Yun. It is Meng who takes decisive action by burning down the Phoenix Pencil Company in Shanghai, an act of defiance against the Communist government’s use of their family power for surveillance. This contrasts sharply with Yun’s participation in a similar surveillance program for the Nationalists in Taiwan.

In the present timeline, Meng is a round but largely static character, having already come to terms with her past. She serves as a catalyst, first by having her picture taken with Louise, which triggers Monica’s search, and later by providing Louise and Monica with crucial guidance. Her decision to tell Louise, a near-stranger, about Reforging demonstrates a wisdom born from experience. She recognizes Louise’s sincere desire for connection and understands that secrets can be more damaging than the truths they protect. Her final Reforged letter to Yun offers forgiveness and a mature perspective on their shared trauma, providing the emotional closure that Yun has sought for decades and underscoring the novel’s belief in the healing power of shared stories.

Professor Logan is a flat, static character who serves as a mentor figure to Monica before revealing himself as the story’s primary antagonist. He embodies the deceptive allure of Silicon Valley idealism, masking a conventional for-profit motive behind a charismatic philosophy of “radical sharing.” He provides Monica with the opportunity to work on EMBRS, a project that appears to align with her desire to use technology for good. His initial support and praise for Monica’s work give her confidence, but his ultimate aim is the commodification of personal stories.

Professor Logan’s character is central to King’s critique of modern technology. He represents the ethical void in tech culture, where personal data is seen as a resource to be mined and sold. He never develops beyond this role. When Monica confronts him by sabotaging his pitch to investors, he concedes that she’s “at least partially right” about the ethics of his project but reacts with anger and a sense of personal betrayal rather than reevaluating his priorities (319). He functions as an ideological opponent to the difficult, non-scalable, and deeply personal connection offered by Reforging, representing a hollow and exploitative alternative to the novel’s more nuanced exploration of Preserving Versus Weaponizing a Person’s Story.