Narrator
The narrator is a grape farmer originally hailing from Ohio who resettles to North Carolina as the seemingly ideal location to help aid in the convalescence and recovery of his ailing wife. The plantation is ramshackle and in great need of repair, to be sure, but on the upside there is a fairly expansive vineyard. What seems far less ideal is the presence of Uncle Julius with his seemingly bottomless wealth of stories about witches and their conjuring skills.
Uncle Julius
The old black man with the stories of witches initially make an attempt to keep the narrator from buying the North Carolina plantation because of that vineyard. With the grapes growing on vines going unattended, he has enjoyed unrestricted access to those grapes and has made a fairly decent little profit for himself by selling the fruit. Eventually, as the narrator’s coachman, he actually becomes a loyal and dependable employee. At the same time, however, most of his stories of witch conjurings seeming to be directed toward personal gain.
Annie
Annie is not OK. The narrator’s wife’s health is poor and that become the only viable reason for her husband to uproot himself from his grape farm in Ohio. Such decisions usually sow the seeds of conflict.
Aunt Peggy
Aunt Peggy is the titular character of the novel. The witch whose conjurings are described in detail by Uncle Julius is for the most part a rather non-malevolent spirit given to casting spells that she—or UncleJulius—calls “goophers.”
Mabel
Mabel is the narrator’s sister-in-law. Her deal is really rather unrelated to the new arrivals in that her main concern is an intense jealousy directed toward a woman she considers to be a rival for affection. Only through one of the stories that Julius offers does she come to realize the wisdom of putting aside the Green Monster and marrying the man who has proposed.
Sandy
Sandy is a slave who appears in one of the stories that Uncle Julius tells. In her story, he is transformed into a tree through conjuring of the witch for personal reasons: she does not want the slave’s master to take Sandy away from her because she loves him.
