The Unmaking of June Farrow

Margaret Farrow is June’s grandmother. The novel initially characterizes her through the curse and how it affected her in the latter part of her life and by June’s memories of her. She’d requested that she be put “to sleep with the fiddle at sunset” (3), a request that is fulfilled during her funeral. June emphasizes her grandmother’s mental decline. She notes that “there weren’t many things that were clear, especially in those final years when Gran’s mind had all but slipped away” (3). Her declining lucidity is revealed to be due to the family curse. However, June also characterizes her grandmother as loving. They are close, as Margaret raised her.

Margaret is initially characterized in absence since the novel begins after her death. However, she becomes a complex and significant secondary character and is present in the 1951 time period of the novel. Here, she is described as “a young woman” at 16 years of age, with “wide blue eyes the color of storm clouds” (121, 131). Margaret in 1951 is both different from and the same as the Gran whom June knew: “[T]here was a girlish smile on the lips and a sun-kissed pink that colored her cheeks […] But behind her eyes and in the air around her I could sense Gran” (122). Margaret remains steady across time in terms of her love for June. She trusts her granddaughter even in the past, after June has seemingly abandoned her husband and daughter, telling her that she knows she had her reasons.

Birdie Forester is initially described as Margaret Farrow’s oldest friend and “more like family than anything” (5). At the beginning of the novel, she has been living with June and Margaret. She attempts to help take care of June but hesitates, knowing June has never liked that. She is loving toward June, particularly in worrying about her. She is particularly concerned when June tells her she has been seeing the door for a year, meaning that she has been away from 1951 (and Annie herself as a child) for longer than she anticipated.

Annie, like Margaret, remains constant across time. When June learns that Birdie is actually her daughter, she notes the consistencies: “[L]ooking at her now, I could see it. There was a sparkle in Annie’s eyes that hadn’t changed in seventy-two years. That golden-silver hair. The rise of her cheekbones. It was all there. In the face of my daughter” (296). As a child, Annie is upset at the loss of her mother, waking up crying each night. She is initially standoffish with June but eventually warms up to her. Annie is not characterized in great detail and does not undertake a significant character trajectory. She is important as a minor character primarily because she exists in both time periods of the novel and is integral to who June is.

Mason is a close friend of the family and June’s best friend; she even states, “[T]he town had speculated that we were more than friends. We were, I suppose. We were family” (17). Like June, he is 34. Mason is devoted to her and respects her insistence that they shouldn’t form a romantic connection. When she tells him she’s been experiencing the initial signs of the curse, he is concerned and emphasizes his loyalty to her: “It’s always been we” (71). When she returns to 1951, she remembers the relationship they could have formed over the next year, in a different timeline. June is surprised that romantic intimacy could have developed while acknowledging that it was in some ways inevitable.

Mason functions as a minor character. Because she stays in 1951 with Eamon, Mason does not reappear after June goes through the door. He is significant in that he represents another potential trajectory of June’s life.

Eamon is June’s husband. Physically, he has “dark hair falling to one side, tucked behind an ear and curling at its ends” (94). As an Irish immigrant, he speaks with “a dim Irish lilt that ha[s] lost its most recognizable traits” (128).

As June gets to know him when returning to the past, the reader does as well. Initially, he is angry and standoffish with June, and she views him as enigmatic. His actions characterize him as determined and hardworking. Unable to afford help after June leaves, he works to prevent blight in the tobacco fields alone, a job that is too much for one person. He is also a devoted father, climbing into bed beside Annie to comfort her each night when she wakes up crying, in spite of his exhaustion.

June describes Eamon as quiet and truthful. She notes, “Margaret was right that Eamon was a quiet creature. He spoke only when he had something to say, and he didn’t lace it in false meaning or palatable words. There was something so honest about him that it made me afraid of what else he might say” (255). As June gets to know him, he loses his enigma and shows his vulnerability, telling June that his life ended when she left. She thinks, “It was the first time he’d let me see him, really see him, since I’d come here. There weren’t any walls built around that truth—it was unguarded. Defenseless” (196). Eamon is a complex and significant secondary character.

Caleb is the sheriff in 1951 Jasper and is eventually revealed to be June’s brother. He is described as clean-cut: “His blond hair was cut short and combed in a neat, waving swoop over his dark, narrowed eyes” (161).

As June’s opponent, Caleb functions as an antagonist throughout much of the novel. He is obsessed with finding out what happened to his father, to the detriment of June, who killed Nathaniel. Like Eamon, he is an enigma to June, who tries to discern whether he has inherited his father’s cruelty. She fears that he has due to their resemblance: “That grim flash in his eyes when he talked about his father, our father, was unmistakable” (287). Ultimately, Caleb is shown to be just when letting June go even though she confesses to Nathaniel’s murder. He knows the truth about Nathaniel’s cruelty and agrees with June that their mother deserves vindication. While he does not become a likable character, he is not the antagonist he initially appears to be.