Pictures Of Hollis Woods

Everyone who first meets Josie is struck by how “movie-star beautiful” (7) she is, even though she’s an elderly lady with a lined face. Her last name is pronounced like “kale,” and she worked for 44 years as an art teacher before retiring. Josie lives alone in the woods of Long Island, not far from the Atlantic Ocean, and she has a reputation for being an excellent foster parent to children considered problematic, like Hollis. She has an unpredictable but loyal orange cat named Henry who follows her everywhere, including in the car.

Josie’s whole life takes the form of artistic expression. Her back yard is full of tree branch statues she has carved, and she has painted the walls of her house with pictures in lively colors. She wears flowing dresses, impractical shoes, and has a collection of expressive hats. Josie sees beauty in everything and will often run outside to twirl in the snow or the moonlight. To Hollis, Josie represents the opposite of every disciplinarian adult Hollis has ever encountered. There are few rules in Josie’s house, and she is just as fond of sweets and playing hooky as a child. It is Josie’s unconventionality that earns Hollis’s trust.

However, that same unconventionality compounded with Josie’s early-stage dementia means Josie can never quite represent a parental figure. She forgets basic caretaking matters, like food and school. Hollis must step in and become a parent to Josie. Josie’s function in the story is partly to open up Hollis to the possibilities of the creative life, partly to allow Hollis to gain trust in her own self-sufficiency, and partly to provide contrast with the Regans’s more stable, adult world—which is ultimately a much healthier environment for Hollis.

Steven, Izzy and the Old Man’s son and Hollis’s foster brother, is 12 years old when he first appears in the novel. He is “a skinny mess” (14) with caramel eyes, glasses, and socks that don’t match. His hobbies include tracking animals, fishing, and working with vehicles and engines. He nicknames Hollis “Holly,” and the whole family ends up adopting that affectionate nickname for her.

Steven represents a contrast: he is charmingly disorganized, but nonetheless very good at anticipating Hollis’s material and emotional needs. He forgets things (like leaving his bedroom window open all winter so the snow ruins the wall) and leaves messes everywhere he goes, much to his father’s consternation. But he’s extremely thoughtful with Hollis, sharing the bigger half of a chocolate bar with her and making her feel welcome to the family in a brotherly, teasing manner. He also has a preternatural ability to guess where Hollis will be and arrive just in time to help her, like when he comes up the mountain to rescue her in the pickup truck or secretly acts as “Santa Claus” for Hollis and Josie at the Branches house.

As the only other child featured in the novel, Steven is Hollis’s foil. His contrasting personality traits shows that it’s possible to be loved and loving while still messing up and occasionally making adults angry, something Hollis does not believe at the beginning of the novel. Steven sees Hollis more clearly than any other character and is ultimately able to convince her she is welcome in the Regan family, showing that while parents are important, the love of people one’s own age can be transformative, too.

John Regan is Steven’s father and Izzy’s husband. Hollis exclusively refers to him as the Old Man. Izzy mentions his first name only once in passing, indicating that his most important function is as a father figure. Hollis describes him as having “eyes the color of cinnamon toast, a prickly gray-black beard, [and] deep laugh lines” (15). The Old Man owns a property in upstate New York, which includes a mountain and a small summer house on the Delaware river. He works as an architect.

The Old Man’s main function is to show Hollis what unconditional parental love looks like in both its steadiness and its complexity. He can read Hollis well in ways Steven occasionally can’t—for example, he correctly sees that Hollis’s favorite color is French Blue, while Steven is certain it’s green. Like Josie, he recognizes Hollis’s artistic abilities clearly and is an artist himself, but the fact that he is an architect rather than a free-spirited independent artist is a metaphor for the more structured environment he can provide for Hollis. Even when Hollis runs away after the car accident, he comes back for her, assuring her as a loving parent should that she is always wanted, no matter how she’s behaved.

The Old Man demonstrates the complexity of parental love through his power struggles with Steven. Though the two naturally have disagreements as a father and son will, Hollis is terrified that the fights mean her presence is destroying the family. It’s a vital piece of Hollis’s character development that she must realize not all conflict means she is a bad person. Her traumatic past has taught her to believe this, but when she sees in her own pictures that the Old Man deeply loves Steven, it precipitates the novel’s denouement because she realizes she can safely return home to them.

Izzy is Steven’s mother, the Old Man’s wife, and Hollis’s foster mother. She is extremely tall with “blond hair […] wrapped around her head” (27). Though Izzy is a happy and very loving person, her only regret in life is that she wasn’t able to have more children after she gave birth to an infant who died at six days old. Izzy’s love for her children is uncomplicated; she does not spar with Steven the way the Old Man does. As the oldest daughter she was never able to have, Hollis turns out to be everything Izzy wants, which is key in making Hollis feel truly wanted. Izzy’s wish for a big family is fulfilled, in turn, by the fact that after the Regans adopt Hollis, she is able to have another baby, whom they name Christina.

Izzy’s main signifier is food. In almost every appearance she makes in the novel, she is offering or making food for her family. Hollis strongly associates Izzy with the hard candies she keeps on her dresser and freely gives away, and with the wonderful apple pancakes she makes. Izzy keeps the summer house full of canned goods that Hollis and Josie survive on when they run away there, and she celebrates Hollis’s adoption by making her a beautiful cake. Izzy’s food symbolizes that she keeps Hollis satiated and cared for, literally and figuratively.