Althea Butler-Cochran

Althea is the oldest of the Butler sisters. She is 48 years old at the time in which the story takes place. She has recently been arrested and charged with defrauding the community for stealing money from a charitable fund in her restaurant, Althea's Kitchen and Grocery, and misusing food stamps. Up until the final section of the novel she is in jail in New River Junction, but she is moved to a prison in Virginia in the Part V to serve out the remainder of her term. Althea's mother died when she was 12, and she acted as a maternal figure to her younger siblings Viola and Joe, but not to Lillian, the youngest, who was raised in a more official capacity by their father. Thus Lillian and Althea have never been close, and over the course of the novel they attempt to bridge this gap in their...