Crow Lake

Luke is the eldest of the Morrison siblings, and he is the one to decide that the family should stick together after their parents die. Luke has fair hair, a long nose, gray eyes, and broad shoulders. Despite both Matt’s and Aunt Annie’s skepticism, Luke decides that he will take care of Kate and Bo, dropping out of school to raise them and work part time.

At the start of the novel, Luke is 19 and has been recently accepted into teachers’ college. As a boy, he doesn’t have much to do with his sisters and often frustrates his parents by leaving the house without explaining where he’s going. If it wasn’t for their parents’ accident, Luke would have been the first Morrison to attend an institute of higher education. He was never particularly academic, however, and Kate suspects he never really wanted to be a teacher. All the same, he struggles to fill the role of caretaker he has assigned himself, and for the first year after their parents die, he takes a number of odd jobs to make ends meet.

Although Luke frustrates Matt with his naïvely optimistic refusal to worry about the future, Luke proves himself to be a viable father figure. When the novel closes, Luke and Bo still live together, and he has found steady income making rustic furniture.

Matt is the second oldest Morrison child, two years younger than Luke. Matt is also fair-haired, long-nosed, and gray-eyed, but he is smaller and quicker than Luke. Matt is remarkably intelligent, and everyone in the community accepts that he is the smart one of the family. Matt is very close with Kate and introduces her to the natural life in the ponds near their house. He loves wildlife and teaches Kate to see nature as both academically interesting and miraculous.

Following their parents’ death, Matt and Luke have a power struggle. Kate notes that Matt sometimes seems older than Luke, as he “saw problems more clearly and was more realistic about the chances of solving them” (163). Kate is revisited by this thought when she sees Matt and Daniel together, noting that it feels as if there is a larger age gap between them than there really is.

As a teenager, Matt wants to leave school to work full time, but Luke convinces him against it. Matt stays in school long enough to take his exams and does even better than expected, winning a scholarship to university. He abandons this plan when Marie gets pregnant, choosing instead to stay with her and raise the child. While Kate spends years regretting the fact that Matt decided not to pursue his education and feeling guilty that she became an academic instead of him, she comes to see that Matt appears happy in the life he chose.

Bo, or Elizabeth, is the youngest of the Morrison children. There is a six-year age gap between her and Kate, and she is a baby for much of the novel. In infancy, Bo is loud and determined to get her way. She is stubbornly opposed to strangers and comes to associate Aunt Annie with the loss of her parents. She tends to be attached to Luke, especially immediately after the accident.

At the end of the novel, Bo is 21. She has grown to be tall, beautiful, and very talkative. She continues to live with Luke, who is trying to teach her to drive. She works as a cook in town, and although she has completed a cookery course, she tells Kate that she’s less interested in the “academic side” of her work. 

Daniel is Kate’s boyfriend of about a year. At 34, he is the youngest full professor in his zoology department, specializing in bacteria. He has thin sandy hair, a hawkish nose, and an easygoing demeanor. He is thin but not in good shape. Kate considers him rather naïve, as he’s never really had to struggle for anything, but she also admires him for his humor, generosity, intelligence, and kindness.

Daniel comes for a highly educated family, and his parents are both professors. His parents frequently bicker, prompting Daniel to nickname them the “war department.” Kate expects Daniel to be embarrassed by their behavior, which seems extreme compared to the restraint in her own family, but he considers them perfectly normal. Daniel loves Kate and badly wants to be involved with her life but feels she doesn’t give him the opportunity. He is initially hurt when he thinks Kate will not invite him to Simon’s birthday. When she decides to invite him after all, he is relieved, and their relationship strengthens as he gets to know her family and home.

Aunt Annie is the sister of the Morrison siblings’ father. After Mr. and Mrs. Morrison die, she stays with the siblings, scrubbing the house and helping them get their legal matters in order. Aunt Annie is short and fat, and while she doesn’t resemble her brother, Kate nonetheless thinks there’s something about her that feels like their father.

Aunt Annie doesn’t have any children of her own, but after her own mother died, she became the matriarch of the family. She is pragmatic about sorting out the children’s affairs but looks shamed when she admits no one in the family can afford to take them all in. Kate thinks they probably would have liked Aunt Annie under normal circumstances, but given the timing, the siblings (especially Bo) associate her visit with tragedy and stress. She is skeptical of Luke’s ability to raise the girls while continuing to work but eventually accepts it. When she takes the train back home, she cries upon saying goodbye, but the Morrisons demonstrate typical emotional restraint by pretending not to notice. 

Calvin is the patriarch of the Pye family. He employs both Matt and Luke, at different times, to help around the farm. Like all the Pye fathers, Calvin is aggressive and abusive towards his children, and particularly toward his son, Laurie. Matt speculates that Calvin is probably insane, given how violently he treats his kids. Kate knows from Miss Vernon that Calvin was abused by his own father.

Calvin’s violence comes to a head when Laurie runs away from home and then, seeking relief from the cold, returns. When Laurie comes home, Calvin takes him to the barn and beats him to death, terrifying his wife and daughters. When the police eventually arrive to question Calvin about Laurie’s disappearance, Calvin shoots himself in front of his wife.

Marie is Calvin and Alice Pye’s oldest daughter. She is in the same school year as Matt but had to leave school to help with the family. Matt and Kate frequently run into Marie on their way back from the ponds, and she usually seems very anxious and unhappy, probably due to her tumultuous home life.

Marie and Matt get to know each other on these encounters and, it is implied, when Marie is looking for comfort after Laurie disappears. Eventually, the two of them have sex and begin a relationship, although Kate doubts that they would have committed to one another if Marie hadn’t become pregnant. As a young woman Marie is plain and perpetually unhappy, but when Kate sees her again as an adult, she notes that her looks have somewhat improved as there is less fear and misery in her eyes.