Elisha “Ellie” Eisen
Ellie is one-half of the star-crossed romantic couple at the center of this tale. She is white, Jewish, and lives with her parents in the Upper West Side of New York City. This is no familiar west side story, however, as gangs are absent and the family lives more than comfortably in the fashionable part of Manhattan. Her life has been exceedingly normal for such a young girl living in such conditions, but all that is about to change with her transfer to a new school, Percy Academy.
Jeremiah “Miah” Roselind
Miah is the other half of the couple, a black fifteen-year-old who is also a new transfer student to Percy. Expectations run heavy that his gift for roundball will make the Percy a serious player in prep basketball circles and with his dreads and just-another-brother from Brooklyn persona one might well assume that it is only athletic talent has brought Miah to the same school as Ellie. What he doesn’t share freely with others is that he is a black kid from Brooklyn whose father is a famous filmmaker and whose mother is a successful novelist.
Nelson and Nelia Roselind
In addition to being the son of two financially secure parents, Miah also tends to keep to himself the fact unusual living arrangement of his mother and father: maritally separated but living right across the street from each other. There is also the matter of dad’s live-in girlfriend in the complicated domestic life that Miah calls home but relentlessly keeps at a distance from Ellie.
Marion and Edward Eisen
Ellie’s parents are separated in less physically obvious, but more painfully emotional way. Marion has historically been a troubled maternal figure. Twice abandoning her role and twice returning have left skidmarks on Ellie’s psyche which are not soon to fade. Meanwhile, her father is a doctor married to his practice and so only an emotional support in the most unusual of circumstances. This domestic situation may go a long way toward explaining why her four older siblings scattered in the wind across the country at the first opportunity.
Carlton
Carlton is Miah’s best friend an integral component in juicing the relationship between Miah and Ellie along. His own parents form an interracial couple and so Miah can go to him for guidance and advice and receives mostly positive feedback. Carlton’s ultimate argument is that his own parents and his very existence is proof enough that all the racial antagonism and opposition expressed by others need not define such a relationship as doomed even before it begins.
