Character Analysis
Bodine Wadell
Bodine is Glen's dairy-owning father and your typical emotionally-elusive father figure who is always calling you a failure. Glen gets nervous and stutters around him.
James Waddell
James is Glen's older brother. He's a dentist. He lives in a nice house with rose bushes, and apparently he gets a new lawn mower every year, because why not? You only live once. He looks down on Anney and her girls and calls them some really unsavory things.
Lyle Parsons
Lyle is Anney's first husband, and the father of Reese. He dies in a car accident not long after Reese's birth. Lyle is described as pretty, and that's about it.
Madeline Waddell
Madeline is James Waddell's wife. She also looks down on Anney and the girls and calls them "trash" when she thinks that they can't hear.
Mrs. Pearl
Mrs. Pearl is Shannon's oblivious mother who refuses to see any vice or negativity in the world. She's totally religious and says that Shannon's appearance (she's albino) is a gift from God. She provides the main financial support for the family by embroidering costumes for gospel singers. At Shannon's funeral she says all this stuff that isn't true, like how Shannon loved babies and was a good singer.
Shannon Pearl
Shannon is Bone's friend for a season. She is albino and is constantly tormented and called ugly to her face. Her defense against the world is to perpetually clean her glasses and come up with revenge stories in which people die in horrible ways. She herself dies in a pretty horrible way: during a barbeque, a can of lighter fluid explodes in her hand.
Travis
Travis is Ruth's husband. He is the one driving the car (drunk, of course) when it crashes and Anney gives birth to Bone.
Tyler Highgarden
Tyler is the manager at Woolworth's. When Anney catches Bone stealing Tootsie Rolls, he is the one she is made to apologize to, and he's kind of a condescending jerk about it. Eventually Bone gets her revenge by breaking into Woolworth's and letting it get raided. So it evens out.
Wade
Wade is Alma's husband. He's got a lot of flaws: he's racist, he fools around with other women, and he says some really messed-up things to Alma when she asks him for another baby.