Character guide

Selina DeJong

major

Also known as Selina, Selina Peake, Miss Peake, Miss Selina Peake

Raised in hotel lobbies and boardinghouse parlors by a charming, itinerant gambler, Selina arrives in High Prairie as a schoolteacher with more imagination than practical sense. Marriage to a stoic Dutch farmer and years of grubbing vegetables out of stubborn earth sharpen rather than dim her — she borrows money, learns the commission markets, and builds DeJong asparagus into a name the merchants seek a year ahead. Her fierce, unappeasable hope for her son Dirk is the engine of the book: she wants him bigger than the prairie, and the novel keeps asking what that wanting costs.

Dirk DeJong

major

Also known as Dirk, DeJong

Dirk grows up well liked and effortlessly average, blessed with the social gift of listening while others talk, and everyone — especially his mother — reads a future into his fine, inclined head. He is neither brilliant nor driven, and the novel watches him slide from a general university course into tailoring, roadsters, a Japanese houseman, and the correct little pile of invitations on the console. His quiet dissatisfaction, and the gap between what Selina sacrificed for and what he became, is the ache at the center of the book's middle stretch.

Dallas O'Mara

major

Also known as Miss O'Mara, Miss Dallas O'Mara

Dallas arrives in Dirk's office as a successful illustrator who still thinks nine dollars is a lot of money, and she unsettles him precisely because she sees life from the same angle his mother does. Her slow wide smile and unhurried honesty expose the hollowness of his tailored Chicago existence without ever lecturing him. She matters because she is the test the novel sets for Dirk: whether he can recognize a woman of real substance when she is standing in front of him, or whether he will keep choosing the correct and the easy.

Roelf Pool

supporting

Also known as Roelf, Pool, Little Roelf Pool

Roelf is the Klaas Pool family's unlikely yield — a boy who read too much and saw too sharply for the flat, thrifty prairie that raised him, and who left it to become an artist. His sculpture The Seine scandalizes High Prairie with its nude, sinuous figure, and Selina, who once taught him, is the only one who understands what he has made. He returns late in the book as a famous, gentle man of forty-five, proof that the prairie could produce something other than crops and thrift — and a quiet rebuke to what Dirk settled for.

Pauline

supporting

Also known as Paula, Paula Arnold, Paula Storm

Paula — Pauline Arnold, later Paula Storm — is the glittering counterexample to Selina's grubbing life, a woman who trades beauty and charm for a lakefront estate, rose-brocade guest rooms, and a husband who telephones that he'll be late. She is generous, careless, and entirely at home in the world of money that Dirk covets, and she gives him his first real taste of how the other half lives. Her ease and her emptiness both matter: she shows the reader what Dirk is reaching for, and how little it actually nourishes.

Pervus DeJong

supporting

Also known as DeJong, Pervus, Mrs. Pervus DeJong

Pervus DeJong is the plain, decent, unremarkable farmer Selina marries — a man of the soil in the most literal sense, whose wants are small and whose imagination is smaller. He works his worn-out truck farm without complaint and without vision, and the novel is honest that Selina's love never quite made him the figure she had hoped for. His early death leaves her the land, the debts, and the chance to prove that she, not he, could make the DeJong acres bloom — the pivot on which the whole middle of the book turns.

Julie Hempel

supporting

Also known as Julie, Julie Hempel Arnold, Arnold, Julie Arnold

Julie moves through Chicago's moneyed circles as the wife of Michael Arnold, a man her father privately scorns as too soft to smell the stockyards. She is amiable, literal, and a little blinkered — she nods wisely at Selina's talk of beauty and growth without grasping a word of it, and she cannot see that her own life, arranged by a doting father, is exactly the gilded cage Selina is warned against. Her cheerful incomprehension sharpens the novel's central question: what does it mean to want the right things for the people you love?

Maartje Pool

minor

Also known as Maartje, Pool

Roelf's mother, a hardworking and traditional Dutch farm woman.

Klaas Pool

minor

Also known as Klaas, Mrs. Pool, old Klaas Pool

Roelf's father, a stern and conservative Dutch farmer.

Mattie Schwengauer

minor

Also known as Mattie, Pat

A neighbor girl on the prairie who becomes a friend to Selina.

August Hempel

minor

Also known as Hempel, old August Hempel, Aug, Old Aug Hempel

Julie's wealthy and domineering father, a Chicago business magnate.

Simeon Peake

minor

Also known as Simeon

Selina's father, a cultured and somewhat impractical dreamer.

Widow Paarlenberg

minor

Also known as The Widow Paarlenberg, Paarlenberg

A wealthy widow in the Dutch community who takes an interest in Selina.

Chris Spanknoebel

minor

Also known as Chris, Spanknoebel

A hired hand on the DeJong farm who becomes a friend to the family.

Theodore A. Storm

minor

Also known as Teddy, Theodore Storm, Storm

A wealthy young man who marries Pauline and becomes a patron of the arts.

Eugene Arnold

minor

Also known as Eugene, Gene

Julie's husband, a successful but somewhat dull businessman.

Jozina Pool

minor

Also known as Jozina

Roelf's sister, a quiet and dutiful farm girl.

Geertje Pool

minor

Also known as Geertje Pool Vander Sijde

Another sister of Roelf who marries and moves away.

General Emile Goguet

minor

Also known as General Goguet, Emile Goguet

A French general and art collector who befriends Roelf in Paris.

Meena Bras

minor

Also known as Meena

A young woman from the Dutch community who works as a servant.

Jan Snip

minor

Also known as Jan

A Dutch farmer and neighbor on the prairie.

Ethelinda Quinn

minor

Also known as Miss Quinn, Miss Ethelinda Quinn

A teacher at the school where Selina works.

Adam Ooms

minor

Also known as Ooms, Adam

A young man from the Dutch community who courts Selina briefly.

Sobig DeJong

minor

Also known as Sobig, Little Sobig DeJong

Selina and Pervus's younger son, who dies tragically in childhood.

Johannes Ambuul

minor

Also known as old Johannes, Ambuul

An elderly neighbor on the prairie who tells stories of the old country.

Goris Von Vuuren

minor

Also known as Von Vuuren, Goris

A fat and jovial Dutch farmer in the community.

Jakob Hoogendunk

minor

Also known as Hoogendunk, Jakob, old Jakob

An old Dutch farmer known for his stubbornness.

Leendert Paarlenberg

minor

The son of the Widow Paarlenberg, a young man in the community.

Mabel

minor

A young woman who works as a maid in the Hempel household.

Michael Arnold

minor

Also known as Michael, Mike

Julie and Eugene's son, a friend of Dirk's from childhood.

Miss Fister

minor

A strict schoolteacher in the prairie community.

Reverend Dekker

minor

Also known as Dekker, The Reverend Dekker

The minister of the Dutch Reformed church in the community.

Barend DeRoo

minor

Also known as DeRoo

A Dutch farmer known for his large family.

Phil Emery

minor

Also known as Phillip Emery, Phillip

A young man from Chicago who becomes a friend of Dirk's.

Mrs. Tebbitt

minor

Also known as Tebbitt

A neighbor woman on the prairie who helps Selina.

Pom

minor

Also known as the DeJong dog Pom

The DeJong family dog, a loyal companion on the farm.

Mrs. Emery

minor

Also known as Emery

Phil Emery's mother, a society woman in Chicago.

Peter Peel

minor

Also known as Peel

A young man from the Dutch community who courts Mattie.

Bert Colson

minor

Also known as Colson, Bert

A friend of Dirk's from his time in Chicago.

Mrs. Vander Sijde

minor

Also known as Vander Sijde

A neighbor woman who marries into the Pool family.

Kitty Blanchard

minor

Also known as Katrina, Big Kate

A large and boisterous woman who works as a cook.

Gerrit Pon

minor

Also known as Gerrit

A Dutch farmer in the community.

Jan Bras

minor

Also known as One Jan Bras, Bras

A Dutch farmer and neighbor.

Cornelia Vinke

minor

Also known as Cornelia, Helen

A young woman from the Dutch community.

Miss Lodge

minor

A teacher at the school where Selina works.

Mrs. Hempel

minor

August Hempel's wife and Julie's mother.

Cornelius Van der Bilt

minor

Also known as Cornelius

A wealthy businessman and friend of the Hempel family.

Aggie Vander Sijde

minor

Also known as Aggie, Vander Sijde

A young woman from the Dutch community.

Mrs. Arnold

minor

Eugene Arnold's mother, a society matron.

Adam Bras

minor

Also known as Adam

A young man from the Dutch community.

Captain Stokes-Beatty

minor

An English officer who appears briefly in the story.