Characters

After reading the first 30 pages of Friendswood by Rene Steinke, I've come across quite a few interesting main characters. So far, I've been introduced to Lee, Hal, and Willa, all of whom live in the tight-knit town of Friendswood, Texas. Steinke makes it very clear who the main characters are, as each chapter title holds the name of the character that part of the story will focus on.

Lee lives alone and often goes back to the remnants of her old house where her family had once lived happily together. She has an ulterior motive for entering the restricted area around her old home, but she is a sentimental character. As she stands where her kitchen used to be, she "felt the old upstairs ghosted above her, the bed where she'd slept with Jack, and Jess's bedroom, with its window overlooking the street" (9). She also has faith in uncovering some secret kept by the old oil refinery near her house that will somehow "redeem her" (11), so Lee wants compensation for something she lost in her past.

Hal sells residential properties, but he hasn't had much success recently. He blames it on the fact that "now people just recklessly relied on the Internet rather than, God forbid, pay a live person" (13). He thinks that if he prays more and strengthens his tie to God, he'll be rewarded with success. Hal also had an affair with a woman named Dawn while he was with his wife Darlene, whom he still loves. He ended both the affair and his drinking problem, and he's trying to become a better person. "He had to stop himself, because too much thinking ... took him to places that deviled him. To pray was more rational ... it put God back in charge" (16). So Hal is also a religious man who knows he's done wrong in the past but wants to be better in the future.

Willa is a teenage girl who sees visions no one else can see, and she doesn't understand them. "This extra sight was a weird new ability like double-jointedness, come to her late in the summer, but she didn't know if it was real" (20). At first, I thought Willa's ability was to see ghosts, but that doesn't seem to be the case. She sees images of both people and objects that seem to be random, and she is secretive about this ability because "she hadn't told anyone, not even [her best friend]" (20).

There's still a lot of mystery around these characters in Friendswood, but I'm intrigued. I want to know what happens next!