Serena Pemberton

Serena is the main character of the story. She is a flat character who does not grow or change throughout the novel. She is an unconventional beauty who wears her hair short, an unusual thing for a woman of the late 1920's. She also wears pants and sports calluses on her hands. Serena's father was a timber man in Colorado and he taught her to ride and shoot when she was a girl. When her entire family died from an illness, Serena was placed in a boarding school for young women. She is intent on living in the present, so she had her family home burned to the ground and doesn't speak of her past.

Serena is unlike other women of her time, even being attributed with mythical powers by the lumber company's employees. She rides an enormous white Arabian around the camp, and doesn't do so...