One Came Home Characters

Denial Isn't Just a River in EgyptEver heard of the five stages of grief? At Agatha's funeral, Georgie gets stuck on stage one—denial—and won't let go; she says, "it was the day of my sister's...

Heartbreaker, Dream MakerOr maybe just heartbreaker, unless your dream is to homestead in Minnesota, in which case good luck with that. Billy McCabe, Agatha's teenage sweetheart, is the cutest boy...

Agatha is the most important character who never actually makes a real-time appearance in the book. She disappears before the first page, and all we get from her in the end is a letter. Everything...

Grandfather Bolte is Georgie and Agatha's grandfather and Ma's father. The truth is, though, he gets along with Georgie best of all. They value the same things—namely, the general store and guns...

Georgie renames Frederick the mule Long Ears, and other than Billy, Long Ears is her most constant companion throughout the book. Though she doesn't want him at first, believing she's paid for a ho...

Wow, do we ever feel sorry for Ma. She loses her husband to the Colorado Gold Rush and never finds out what happened to him. She believes her elder daughter's body has been exposed to the elements...

Okay, so a thirty-five-year-old hotel owner is perhaps not our pick for Most Romantic Lead Ever, and we'll admit that at first we thought he was just a creepy old rich guy who was only into Agatha...

Mr. Blair Garrow is what we might call a piece of work. His aw-shucks, neighborly attitude goes right out the window when Georgie and Billy discover his counterfeiting business. He comes after them...

When Georgie sees Mrs. Garrow, she thinks, "A useful woman—that's what Ma would say. There wasn't an ounce of waste on her, everything toughened and wiry [...] She didn't look done in either, lik...

Sheriff McCabeSheriff McCabe is Billy's father, Placid's lawman, and eventually, Georgie's stepfather. He's also the one who discovers the body in Agatha's gown and sets the whole story in motion:...