Mary

Mary is the protagonist and narrator of the novel "The Forest of Hands and Teeth" by Carrie Ryan. Mary is a teenaged girl in her marrying years, who lives in a village surrounded by the Forest of Hands and Teeth, inhabited by the undead Unconsecrated. Mary is best friends with Cassandra. Mary has grown up with her brother, Jed, listening to their mother's stories of the ocean. Mary dreams of making it to the ocean one day, to a place where life is beautiful and full and free of Unconsecrated. Yet, the death of Mary's mother means her expulsion from her own home by her brother, who sends her to become a member of the Sisterhood under Sister Tabitha, the religious order that safeguards the moral order of the village. Mary loses her faith in God with the death of her mother, but she does not lose faith...