Pleasant Riderhood

Pleasant is the daughter of the river-thief Roger Riderhood, a young woman of the waterside whose tavern and whose father's reputation both weigh on her. She has a romantic interest in Mr. Venus, the articulator of bones, and her cautious hope for a better life is shadowed by her father's trade. Her position between respectability and the river's criminal world makes her a quiet measure of how the novel's characters are shaped by their origins.