Ellen Foster

“All I did was wish him dead real hard every now and then. And I can say for a fact that I am better off now than when he was alive.”

This early passage establishes Ellen’s narrative voice, which is straightforward about her reactions and desires. These sentences about her animosity toward her father define her imagination and her lack of sentiment and foreshadow the novel’s subjects of child abuse as well as Ellen’s move to a new living situation.

“I do remember when I was scared. Everything was so wrong like somebody had knocked something loose and my family was shaking itself to death. Some wild ride broke and the one in charge strolled off and let us spin and shake and fly off the rail.”

Ellen describes her emotions when she understood her mother was ill and her father was not going to behave as a properly nurturing authority. The metaphor of the roller coaster going off the rail captures Ellen’s fear and sense of having no control.

“And oh how I have my rage and desire for the lightning to come and strike a vengeance on him. But I do not control the clouds or the thunder. And the way the Lord moves is his business.”

This is a further example of Ellen’s voice and the prose style that pervades the novel. She thinks this while listening to a storm as she lies beside her mother, just home from the hospital, and the suggestion that she cannot rely on God for help reflects Ellen’s prosaic form of belief and her self-reliance, since the adults in her life have failed to protect her.