Protagonist

Character Role Analysis

Lily Samson

While there's a ton of characters in this book, the story really revolves around Lily and her desire to change herself and her family into something more "proper" (1.1). She bends over backward trying to get Lonnie and Pop to make up, tries to dictate how Marigold should behave and dress at work, and tends to see the world from a relatively self-centered perspective. Her justification for why Lonnie and Pop should forgive each other? "I want that party" (30.7). Yeah, it's all about Lily in this one.

By the end of the book, Lily learns a valuable lesson: She can't be responsible for changing her family. Part of the reason she can't "get her head around it all" (42.1) when everything goes so well with the family reunion is because she has been so focused on herself that she hasn't noticed how people around her have been changing on their own. Oops.

The fact that she answers the phone when her father calls from America and even calls him "Dad" (42.69) is clear evidence of change in our main girl: She's beginning to realize the beauty in her family's broken story and the need to consider the feelings of others as well as her own. Yup—it's a big shift from how she starts out. Sounds like a protagonist's journey to us.