The Uncalled

Fred Brent

Raised by the stern Miss Prime after his mother's death, Fred grows into a gifted orator whom Dexter hails as a "boy preacher" — a label he detests as much as the town's whispered reminders of his parents' disgrace. He throws himself into study and debate, yet his growing fame as a speaker drags him toward a pulpit he never chose, and his private letters confess a quiet, well-appearing devil of revolt. His struggle between duty to those who shaped him and the hunger to fail or succeed on his own terms drives the novel's central question.

Miss Hester Prime

Miss Hester Prime is the woman who, amid the gossip and grudges of Margaret Brent's deathbed, astonishes her neighbors by claiming the child as her own burden. She spars openly with women like Mandy Warren, defending her charity while refusing to soften her judgment of Margaret's life, and she shapes Freddie after a pattern of her own devising. Her fierce, unyielding love — expressed as duty rather than tenderness — becomes the anvil against which Fred's ambitions and rebellions are beaten.

Eliphalet Hodges

Eliphalet Hodges moves through Dexter's church life as a quiet, good-hearted deacon, watching Fred's rise with a mixture of pride and anxious sympathy. Where others lecture Fred on duty, Eliphalet whispers that he knows how the young man feels, insisting he will always be "Freddie" to him. His steady, unpretentious friendship offers Fred the only real refuge from the pressures of congregation and college alike.

Mrs. Hester Hodges

Mrs. Hodges runs her household with a firm moral ledger, lumping baseball with dancing as idle wastes of a preacher's precious time. She welcomes Fred into her home and frets over his soul, but her well-meant lectures only deepen the gap between the life others have planned for him and the life he dreads. Her husband's silent sympathy stands in quiet contrast to her spoken expectations.

Mrs. Sallie Martin

Mrs. Martin belongs to the circle of Dexter women who gather to lay out Margaret Brent and then debate, with astonishing speed, who should take the orphaned child. She is among the astonished chorus when Miss Prime declares the boy her duty, and her murmured wonderings — how Miss Hester will manage him, whether she will be good to him — voice the town's collective doubt. Her presence anchors the novel's opening in the small-town gossip that will shadow Fred for years.

Tom Brent

Tom Brent is a brute and a drunkard who beat his wife, drove her to divorce and drink, and vanished from Dexter without a trace. Though he never appears in the flesh, his reputation precedes Fred everywhere — when the young student rises to preach, nine-tenths of the congregation sees not Frederick Brent but "old Tom Brent's boy." His shadow is the inherited shame against which his son's entire struggle for self-definition is waged.