All the Colors of the Dark

Saint is one of the protagonists of the novel and Patch’s childhood best friend. Physically, she is an awkward child who grows up to be an attractive woman, though she never cares much about her appearance. She is smart, stubborn, and self-sacrificing. She is the driving force behind Patch’s rescue and devotes her life to his quest to find Grace, eventually working with the FBI and later becoming the Monta Clare police chief. Even as a child, Saint knows that she is not interested in many aspects of traditional femininity; instead, she “weighed questions that had nothing to do with fashion or baking or making a goddamn motherfucking home” (39). This drive to prioritize her career over becoming a wife and mother is a source of conflict between Saint and her grandmother, Norma, and something that Saint feels guilty about her entire life. Even after escaping her abusive marriage to Jimmy, she doesn’t correct the rumors he spreads about her. Though she gave her son, Theodore, up for adoption as an infant, she doesn’t ever feel ready to meet him, nor to be a mother figure to Charlotte. Instead, she tells the girl to think of her as a friend.

Saint excels as an officer of the law because she is empathetic and takes things seriously. Her grandmother tells her, “The problems…the flaws in design, and you take them so personally” (313). This drive allows her to tirelessly devote herself to catching Eli Aaron and saving Patch. It also means that she is very critical of herself and never feels like she is doing enough. She finally feels confident by the novel’s end, when she realizes that she “no longer needed her badge for validation” because “she knew in her heart what was good and right” (580). This includes letting Patch go free from the law.

Ivy is Patch’s mother. Her husband died in the Vietnam War, and she has difficulty providing for herself and Patch through low-paying jobs, including custodial work. She struggles with addiction to alcohol and pills but loves her son deeply and dreams of providing him with a better life. To comfort him, she tells him he is a pirate: “[H]is mother peddled the romance of a cutlass and eye patch because often for kids like him the flair of fiction dulled a reality too severe” (3). The townspeople look down on her because of her poverty and presentation. Saint notes that “Ivy Macauley wore a smart dress cut low on her chest like she wanted to show the world they were decent but did not own the right clothes for the occasion” (25). After Patch’s kidnapping and return, Ivy is never the same, and her addiction becomes all-consuming. She dies when he is a young adult and is buried quietly.

Norma is Saint’s grandmother. She is a widow and makes a living driving a bus. Her daughter, Saint’s mother, died in childbirth and is the only mother Saint has ever known. Norma is a woman of faith and a devout Catholic but also loves to drink and smoke. Many of the townspeople assume she is a lesbian: “She has the short hair, and she smokes cigars” (38). She is very tough and unsentimental, capable of doing what is needed to survive. When Saint is surprised that she knows how to build things and asks her where she learned woodworking, she points out that no one would be surprised if she were a man: “You ever ask that question to your grandfather when he was alive?” (30). Despite her love for Saint, she is blind to Jimmy’s flaws and blames her granddaughter for the failure of the marriage. She urges her to adhere to traditional gender roles and tells her that women tending men is just how the world works. This rift between them is still not mended at the time of Norma’s sudden death from a heart attack.

Sammy is a mentor and father figure to Patch, as well as the owner of the local art gallery. In Monta Clare, he is known for being a womanizer and a drunk. He is often coarse and abrasive, though he can be charming when the mood strikes him. Encountering him as a young man, Patch thinks he is “handsome though he carried an air of fallen-from-grace” with “his hair a mess of curls” and his fastidious outfits (142). He dresses oddly for rural Missouri, wearing tweed jackets, vests, expensive gold watches, and carrying a cane that he doesn’t need.

Though Sammy has a prickly exterior, he is a kind man. He sees Patch’s artistic talent and nurtures it and looks out for him when he is in prison. As a young man, he loved Mary but was bought off by her father and Franklin Meyer, purchasing a Rothko for leaving her alone. At the novel’s end, he and Mary have re-ignited their romance, and he tells her if he could do it over, “I’d leave the Rothko where it was, because I already had something far more beautiful to make a life with” (573). His character undergoes a redemption arc, from the town drunk to a man who helps raise Patch and then Charlotte who loves Mary.

Nix is the police chief of Monta Clare and acts as a mentor and father figure to Saint. He cares deeply about his job and is grieved when he initially cannot find Patch after his abduction. The text describes him as handsome with a “kind face” and a mustache. He and Tooms are lovers and quietly spend most of their lives together without letting anyone else know since they assume that the town will frown upon their relationship.

Though he works as an officer of the law, he also understands that sometimes morality means stepping outside of it. He helps Tooms bury Callie, and he takes justice into his own hands and kills her father for sexually abusing her. He also dies by suicide not wanting to make Saint feel guilty about taking him in. He tells Saint that “a single life is made up of a dozen or more roles and responsibilities. I can count the versions of myself like friend and foe. […] To love and be loved is more than can ever be expected, more than enough for a thousand ordinary lifetimes” (287). This affirmation reminds Saint that people are multifaceted and entitled to their secrets. It also reminds her of the importance of all kinds of love, not just romantic love.

Tooms is the doctor in Monta Clare. He is a kindly man who is often melancholy. Patch observes, “Tooms smiled, his face written with pain, his eyes filled with so much Patch could not understand” (168). Tooms does not report Ivy Macauley to social services, worrying about separating her and Patch. He also does not report Patch when the boy steals his cufflinks, and he tends to Ivy free of charge.

Unbeknownst to the townsfolk, Tooms performs abortions for local girls who cannot access them elsewhere. He does this work though he is a deeply religious man and tells Patch that he attends church “[t]o ask forgiveness for acts [he] know[s] in [his] heart [he] will commit again” (172). For Tooms, doing what is right morally often means breaking rules. He refuses to betray the women he helped even when it means taking the blame. He lies to Patch about killing Grace in hopes that he will save the boy from more grief. Ultimately, Tooms lives on Nix’s farm without his deceased lover and finally attains a life of quiet peace after much suffering.

Misty is the mother of Charlotte and the on-again-off-again romantic partner of Patch. As a young woman, she is privileged and widely admired. Her family is one of the richest in town, and she is a good student and a track star. Popular and considered beautiful, Misty is envied by many, including Saint: “Misty took a drink of water, her lips full and pink against hair so light it touched platinum. A halo for a girl who already carried too much that shone” (14). After Patch saves her from Eli Aaron, Misty experiences trauma and guilt over surviving at Patch’s expense. She pursues friendship and eventually romance with Patch and reveals herself to be stubborn and tough, capable of much more than people initially assumed.

She briefly attends Harvard but drops out after becoming pregnant and moves home to give her daughter a good life. She tells Patch, “I moved so Charlotte could have what I had. So my mother could know her” (386). Until her early death from cancer, she devotes herself to ensuring that Charlotte is loved and given the freedom to become clever and independent. Though she accepts that there is no place for a romantic relationship between herself and Patch, she ensures that he has a relationship with his daughter.

Charlotte is Misty and Patch’s daughter. Despite being raised in the wealthy Meyer household, she curses, shoplifts, and is irreverent, much to the chagrin of her maternal grandmother. The narrative depicts her as tough and feisty. She was initially skeptical of Patch when she met him, but eventually came to trust him. Her greatest fear is abandonment, stemming from her mother’s death and her father’s imprisonment. She tells Saint that she knows her father loves Grace more than her: “I never come first […] I remember the first time I met him I told him Grace was his rainbow connection. Dumb kid shit. But…but maybe you only get one, Saint” (519). This fear leads her to resist forming a relationship with Saint and insist that she doesn’t need her. At the novel’s end, she finally makes peace with her fears, accepting Saint’s love, finding her father, and running into his arms.

Aaron is a serial killer and the main antagonist of the novel. He lures in girls by photographing them and promising to make them models and then kills them and buries them with a rosary. He sees himself as “doing God’s work” and chooses “penitent sinners,” specifically girls who came to Tooms seeking an abortion (541). His alias is a reference to the biblical figure Eli, son of Aaron, who judged others.

The text portrays Aaron’s character as monstrous. When Saint encounters him as a child, she is terrified by his size and off-putting demeanor: “His hands hung like meat by his side. His eyes were empty till he smiled, his teeth bright against stubbled skin, his hair long and parted with oil” (76). In addition to destroying the lives of the girls he kills, he also ruins the life of his young daughter, Grace. He forces her to travel with him and threatens her if she ever reveals his secret. When Patch and Saint kill him at the novel’s end, his death is a relief for Grace and many others.

Grace is Eli’s daughter and Patch’s love interest. She is clever, kind, and determined. She saves Patch from her father and comforts him in the darkness, telling him stories daily so that he won’t give up hope. Though her life with her father is terrifying and lonely, she also clings to hope: “Grace told of how [Patch] had kept her alive with his paintings, his story, his strength to right their past, to find his passion. To love” (592). She is mentally tough and a survivor despite the years of fear and trauma that she endured at the hands of her father. Patch thinks she is beautiful and looks just like he imagined her in his painting: “The delicate purse of her lips, the full green of her eyes. He looked at her skin and legs and feet and hands. Her hair was richly red, her dress pinched at a narrow waist” (560). Though Patch pursues her for years, he doesn’t know much about her. He knows that she is kind and clever, but he never realizes that she is Eli’s daughter. In this sense, she acts for him as an artistic muse or a driving purpose. The text reveals much more about what she means to Patch than extensive details about her characterization.