Hope Was Here Characters

Hope Yancey, née "Tulip," knows first-hand about survival. And she'll be the first one to tell you. I was born too early and much too small (two pounds and 5 ounces). For the first month of my lif...

Gabriel Thomas Stoop seems too good to be true. Well, he's a fictional character, so we guess he can be as good as the author needs him to be. He's unfailingly kind, honest, humble, compassionate,...

Addie is Hope's aunt, her mother's big sister. When Hope's mother leaves right after Hope's born, Addie takes on the job of raising her. It's an itinerant existence. Addie's forced to pull up stake...

The head assistant cook at the diner is a young guy by the name of Braverman. He and Hope have a lot in common. They've both experienced some rough patches in life, but have faced them with strengt...

Meet the only 17-year-old in all of Wisconsin (perhaps in all of America) to wish for a button-making machine as he's blowing out the candles on his birthday cake. As the President of the Students...

The new deputy sheriff in Mulhoney isn't just another pretty face. According to Flo, Brenda Babcock is "the toughest law enforcement officer on God's earth" (40). While it's a bit hard to prove it...

Cecelia Culpepper, editor of the town's newspaper, the Mulhoney Messenger, uses the power of the press to spread the good word about G.T. (by publishing letters of support written by the teens in t...

Everything you need to know about Hope's mother you can know from the fact that she named her daughter "Tulip."Deena, who left right after hope was born, is a perfect study of contradictions. She c...

When Lou Ellen notices a funeral hearse parked right in front of the diner, she exclaims, "Yuck…Those things give me the creeps" (55). That's exactly what we have to say about Mayor Millstone and...

Flo is the floor manager at the Welcome Stairways diner. She's warm, friendly, and kind, and she makes a good impression on Addie when they meet for the first time (which is no easy feat). Flo is t...

Although Jillian seems more comfortable interacting with her computer than with humans, she reads people very well and genuinely cares about a select few. She's the one who notices the spark betwee...

The red-headed waitress at the Welcome Stairways diner doesn't exactly warm up to Hope when they first meet. She bombards Hope with a series of questions (Where did you work? For how long? How busy...

What more can we say about a pastor who orders his eggs with "Satan's Red-Hot Revenge" sauce on the side"? G.T.'s close friend Al B. Hall truly is a bit devilish, but it works in everyone's favor....

If Hope Was Here were remade as a Looney Tunes cartoon, Sheriff Greebs would undoubtedly be played by Yosemite Sam. It's not hard to imagine either one of them strutting into the Welcome Stairways...

Sid Vole…a.k.a. the Spin Doctor...a.k.a. the uncle with the ulcer. Adam Pulver convinces G.T. that his uncle Sid would be the perfect campaign manager. Sid has a reputation for making winners out...

Yuri, the Russian busboy at the Welcome Stairways, truly seems out of place in a Midwestern, small-town diner. He doesn't have full command of the English language and tends to clear the tables bef...