Who is Janie Hannagan from Wake and what is their importance?

Janie Hannagan, the novel's main character, is the only child of an alcoholic mother. Janie doesn't know who her father is. Janie has always been picked on by the rich girls at school because she wears second-hand clothes and her family doesn't have much money. From the age of eight, Janie realizes that she has the ability to get into the dreams of people that are sleeping near her.

When Carrie moves in next store, Carrie and Janie become best friends. They remain friends from junior high school through high school, even though Carrie is also friends with some of the most popular girls in school. Because Janie's mother is an alcoholic, Janie often takes on the responsibilities of an adult, even at a young age. As soon as Janie is old enough, she lands a job working at a local nursing home. Janie works as much as she can to have money for food, clothes and to save for her own college education.

While Janie comes from a welfare family, she is working hard in school and at her job to make positive changes to her life. By the end of the novel, Janie finds a way to pay her own way through college and get out of the welfare household that she's living in with her mother.