Meet the Characters
Enduring Fire
Will Everett came to Virginia to document a world being erased — only to discover he was part of the machinery doing the erasing.
Evelyn Grant loves her mountain community with the same fierce loyalty she brings to everything — including the man who arrives to document its destruction.
Nate Bernstein is the loyal friend who set Will on the journey that changed everything — and whose own limits made that journey lonelier than either of them expected.
Tom Woods moves through the world with effortless charm and confidence, leaving damage so neatly arranged it barely looks like damage at all.
Effie Dixon — young, trusting, and entirely unprotected farm girl, whose fate makes looking away impossible.
Earl Dixon knows what people desperately want to keep hidden — because he helped them bury some of it.
Reverend Grant, a country pastor whose gentle authority holds his community together — and whose daughter inherited everything that matters most about him.
James and Fanny Thomson work this mountain land as generations before have done— and their dignity outlasts everything that tries to erase it.
Pappy Fletcher — the land made him and the men who came to take it from him needed handcuffs to make their argument.
Bessie runs Skyland Lodge with a firm hand and a wooden spoon — and sees through every pretension that walks through her kitchen door.
Dr. Magruder — blinded by his conviction in the righteous cause of science and progress, he is more dangerous than any man who knows he is doing wrong.
Edmund Everett is a man who has all but forgotten what it feels like to want something different — and calls it wisdom.
Tessa Everett is certain this year will be wonderful for her and her brother — she is half right, though not in the way she imagines.
Florence Everett keeps the family's social appearance polished and intact in a world where appearances matter — and never feels the need to look beneath them.
Choose This Day
Sarah Winslow knows exactly who she is and what she wants professionally — it's everything else she wants that she hasn't quite allowed herself to admit.
James Hartford's greatest battle was never in France — it's the distance between what he feels and what his hands are willing to reach for.
Charles Collins has complete confidence in his own brilliance — the most dangerous men in any profession are those who genuinely believe they are its finest expression.
Sean Harrison’s rare gift is friendship honest enough to matter and warm enough to sustain — offered with a smile that makes it seem the most natural thing in the world.
Mrs. Jacek finds her way through James Hartford’s careful distance to offer him the warmth he needs — until she can entrust him to someone who can give him the love he deserves.
Professor Winslow, a philosopher whose own life embodies the greater calling, lovingly imparted this wisdom to his daughter — and loves her too well to see what following it will cost her.
Mrs. Winslow expresses her love in irises and Sunday dinners — and carries grief so quietly that Sarah never fully recognized how much it has shaped her own life.
Dr. Mott means only the best when he offers Sarah what he believes is something extraordinary — unaware that for her, it means something entirely different.
The Beauteous Form Of Things
Benjamin Phillips sees beautiful, precise patterns in numbers with a passion that blinds him to their human significance — until the consequences become impossible to look past.
Laura Chapman sees Benjamin Phillips clearly, his gifts and his blindness alike — and grieves silently for the struggling, tender seedling of the man he almost allows himself to be.
Edward Sinclair is everything Benjamin Phillips once was — brilliantly capable, institutionally formed, and entirely unaware of what his mentor's example is actually costing them both.