Detective Claypool is a law-enforcement officer leading the investigation into Amina’s suspicious death. He is an effective investigator and is able to carefully sift through clues and evidence in order to build his case. He comes across as a calm, measured man with an even temperament. He expands his own knowledge base by researching the Bosnian War in order to better contextualize Amina’s death, understanding that her past might be crucial to solving the case. However, he is assertive and dislikes Hana’s interference in his investigation. Still, despite becoming irritated with her sometimes, he continues to treat her respectfully.

Claypool is, like Hana, a solitary individual, and he prioritizes his work over his relationships. His marriage ended as a result of his dedication to his job, and in the aftermath of his divorce, he devotes all his energy to work. He and Hana are kindred spirits because they are both single-minded and solitary and share a passion for justice.

Like Hana, Claypool is also characterized by his disillusionment with the legal system. He was deeply affected by a case in which he was not able to prove the perpetrator’s guilt; the victim’s father shot the perpetrator in an act of vigilante justice and ended up in prison. Because of this case, Claypool believes that the system does not always work as it is intended to. He became a law-enforcement officer to “make a difference” (139), so this failure of justice shook his faith in the system. As a result, he is willing to bend the rules in his quest for justice and ultimately helps Hana cover up Luka’s killing. Claypool embodies the novel’s perspective on The Moral Ambiguity of Vigilante Justice and Revenge—according to him, if justice within the law is not always possible, then vigilante justice may sometimes be the only means of accountability.

Amina is Hana’s best friend. Her death is the novel’s inciting incident, but her presence looms large over the narrative. Hana thinks of Amina as “a gentle, forgiving soul” (8), and she is a foil to Hana’s more vengeful and guarded nature. During the war, Amina endures repeated rape and torture, yet she chooses to keep and raise her rapist’s baby because she believes that the child is innocent of the father’s crimes. This decision encapsulates her forgiving nature.

Amina has PTSD as a result of her wartime experiences, and she does her best to process and move on from her trauma and seeks the help of a therapist. Amina is a kind and loving grandmother to Dylan after her daughter, Sara, dies, and Hana is continually struck by how generous Amina is despite her difficult history. Hana cares for Dylan after Amina’s death, in part because she wishes to honor Amina’s legacy: She does not want to let her friend down. In this way, Amina shows Hana a way forward from her past trauma: It is because of Dylan that Hana turns toward love and healing.

Zaim and Amina are romantically involved prior to her death. He has a history of mistreating his female partners, and both his neighbor and former girlfriend identify him as a violent man. Zaim is revealed to be living under a false identity: He claims to be Bosnian but is actually a Serb named Bosko Ivanović and has a criminal past. Zaim is engaged in a blackmail scheme that is targeting Amina’s therapist’s patients. He also targets Luka, demanding hush money because Zaim has learned of Luka’s war crimes. This ultimately leads to his death at Luka’s hands.

Like many of the other characters in this novel, the events of the Bosnian War still loom large in Zaim’s life, even decades after the conflict ended. Although his involvement in the Srebrenica genocide is never clarified, his presence in that region and his choice to assume the identity of a Bosnian man from Srebrenica suggest that he was involved in the mass killing.

Danis is Nura’s younger brother, and she loves him deeply, believing that her life is “perfect” after he is born when she is five. Danis is a quiet boy who becomes increasingly fearful as the war inches ever closer to their family’s property, and he does not want to be enlisted in the army. She gives him the set of blue marbles for him to use as a weapon with his slingshot, symbolizing her sisterly concern for his welfare. Danis ends up using one of the marbles to attack Luka, who then kills Danis.

Nura’s inability to protect Danis remains with her and becomes a key aspect of her postwar guilt. At the end of the novel, she is finally able to put this feeling to rest after she kills Luka. She also forges a bond with another young, vulnerable boy—Amina’s grandson, Dylan—who reminds her of Danis.

Jovana and Tanja are Nura’s childhood friends. They attend a small village school together, and until the outbreak of the war, the three are inseparable. Although Jovana and Tanja are not fully developed characters, they are an important point of engagement with the historical realities of the Bosnian War: Nura comes from a family that, although secular, is ethnically Bosniak, while Jovana and Tanja are Serbian Orthodox Christians. The girls live in an area of Bosnia that has a Serb majority. The author describes the closeness of Tanja and Jovana’s friendship with Nura in order to demonstrate the way that relationships in Yugoslavia were formed across ethno-religious lines: The girls initially do not care that they are Serbian and that Nura is Bosnian. However, as soon as the conflict erupts, Jovana and Tanja turn on Nura. They no longer want to be friends with a Bosnian girl and resort to bullying and even violence. Members of their families kill Nura’s parents and brother, and it is those deaths that she will spend the novel avenging. The post-Yugoslav wars are notorious for the way that neighbors, once friendly, became bitter enemies and subjected one another to acts of extreme brutality. Jovana’s and Tanja’s characters are a fictionalized depiction of that kind of ethno-religious hatred.

Luka, Stanko, and Zorić are the three Serbian soldiers who murder Nura’s family and are the novel’s key antagonists. They are all angry, ruthless men motivated by toxic nationalism and ethno-national hatred. They target Nura’s family in part because her uncle Reuf has joined Bosnian forces. Their ultimate objective is to remove all Bosniaks from their neighborhood. They are a key point of engagement with the harsh realities of the Bosnian War and the role that prejudice and discrimination played in the conflict.

They are also representative of another key aspect of the Bosnian War: the rapidity with which neighbors of different ethno-national backgrounds turned against one another. Luka is Nura’s friend’s brother, and Stanko is another friend’s father. She knows these men well and has spent time with them in their houses. Still, Stanko brutally beats her father to death, and Luke fatally shoots her brother, who is still a child. Captain Zorić embodies another aspect of the wartime atrocities in Bosnia: Before killing Nura’s mother, he violently rapes her. Such violence against women was common during the war.

Luka’s repeated rape of Amina results in a child—her daughter, Sara—which also reflects The Lasting Impact of Wartime Atrocities. Amina has to make the difficult choice of whether to terminate her pregnancy or raise the child of her rapist, and this is reflective of the plight of many real women during the Bosnian conflict. Further, Luka evades prosecution for war crimes and works as a high-level diplomat, which is also reflective of the persistence of unpunished crimes even decades after the war.