| Lucy Hathorne "The contours of her face were childish with skin as downy as a peach yet her figure was as shapely as those of the lovely demimondaines one encounters in Paris. With her startling eyes and exotic coloring, she was a most unsettling alliance between adolescent and woman" Grave, intelligent, spiritual, resilient and beautiful, Lucy is the quintessential Victorian heroine. She has been raised in rural New England in the loving bosom of a tightly-knit family and has had the benefit of an excellent co-educational tutelage and strong moral teaching. Though Lucy initially appears to be pliant and passive, her gentle demeanor and beautiful breeding conceal a will of steel and a strength that is beyond imagining. | |||
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Dr. Charles Stoker Burke
"He was tall, slender and aristocratic with patrician features and an elegance that appeared inbred. His hair was full and dark and he eschewed the heavy muttonchops that many men of fasion wore, instead sporting an elegant mustache. He was four years older than Aunt Ziba but possessed a boyish quality that belied his years" The coolly elegant Dr. Charles Burke is a man of prestige and wealth, a scion of Boston society. He was born into a distinguished Boston family that was subsequently disgraced and bankrupted. He married into wealth and as an old friend of the Bram family he used his position in the world to open doors for first Dr. Bram and Dr. Hathorne and eventually Ziba. With his elegant manner and charm, he quickly becomes Lucy's confident and later, her ardent suitor. His well ordered life of privilege conceals a mystery that only Lucy has the will to unlock. | |||
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Ziba Bram Hathorne
"In spite of her thirty-four years, Ziba possessed a ripe beauty that had not yet begun to fade. She retained the voluptuous joie de vivre that had made her the reigning beauty of Boston and her eyes were still the color of cornflowers, bright, shining and open. Her dark blond hair was coiffed with a fringe of ringlets that accented the sensuality of her features." Ziba has joined the ranks of practitioners of the new profession, mortuary science. Beneath her sensual appearance and carnal appetites, Ziba is at heart a hardheaded Yankee businesswoman raised with a strong work ethic and a belief that women are the equal to men. She is detemined to not only find her own way in a world hostile to unmarried women but to set an example to others of her sex. | |||
| Bride Carew Greer
"A handsome woman in well-starched servant's garb opened an elaborately carved oak door. From her coloring, Lucy surmised the woman was also of mixed blood. The woman possessed European features and skin of pale gold with a scattering of freckles. Her dark auburn hair was braided in an elaborate chignon beneath a lace cap." Strong, handsome and intelligent, Bride Greer is the product of a union between an Irish cook and a mulatto seaman from the West Indian Island of Montserrat. Raised in utter poverty in the poorest part of Boston, Bride was a child domestic who labored with her mother in the great houses of the city. She has found both a home and a husband with the Bram family and in gratitude, is determined to protect the family secret. | |||
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Prince Greer
He was tall and fine-featured with lustrous black eyes and velvet skin the color of cafe au lait. He had an elegant face
framed with a carefully trimmed beard and wavy hair pomaded in place."
Prince Greer is based on a historical character, the first embalmer of color in the United States. An intelligent man of racially mixed ancestry, he was born on a vast plantation in Natchez, Mississippi. As a child, both he and his mother were wedding presents who were sent to serve a wealthy Creole family in rural Louisiana. A chance meeting during the Civil War with Dr. Bram changed the course of Prince Greer's life. He became the head embalmer of the Bram Family Mortuary and a faithful retainer of the Bram/Hathorne family. | |||
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| Edgar Charles Todd "He was slight of build with pale skin and the delicate features of a poet, yet he bore a marked resemblance to Dr. Burke but while the doctor was muscular and robust, Edgar was delicate with dark brooding eyes and skin as pale as any matron on Beacon Street" Delicate in body, fragile in health and spirit, Edgar is Dr. Burke's nephew, the son of Burkes's beloved sister who died in childbirth. The recipient of much of Dr. Burke's inner turmoil, Edgar has grown into a young man who battles his own private demons with drugs and alcohol. Since he was a young boy Edgar has been the guardian of his uncles's clandestine affairs and only finds the will to battle him after meeting and falling in love with Lucy Hathorne. | |||