through to be accepted, but the most important thing for her is that for the first time in her life she is given a warm welcome. Throughout the novel, the reader learns how beautiful her new home is. Ellen also overcomes her racial prejudice and is very glad that her new mama allows Starletta to spend the weekend with her at her new home. Characters Ellen Foster is the 10-year-old protagonist of the novel. She suffers physical abuse and psychological abuse from her alcoholic father and after her mother commits suicide, is tossed around from one household to another. Throughout her journey, Ellen is hopeful that she will someday find a nice and loving home, which she eventually does. Daddy is the novel's antagonist. He abuses his daughter, Ellen, physically, sexually and psychologically. He suffers from alcoholism, and holds no job other than selling liquor and eventually drinks himself to death. Mama, Ellen's mother, has suffered from poor health, suffering from "romantic [rheumatic] fever" since childhood. When she is at last at the hospital, she is so severely depressed as a result of her husband's cruelty and her illness that she commits suicide by overdosing on prescription medication. Starletta is Ellen's black best friend, who helps Ellen to realize that skin color makes no difference in the quality of the person. She lives with her mother and father in a ramshackle cabin with no indoor toilet and they often provide Ellen with refuge from her father. Gradually, Starletta transforms from an unsophisticated child into a mature young woman, and she develops a crush on a white boy from school. New Mama, Ellen's foster mother, is everything for which Ellen could have hoped. New Mama is kind, caring, nurturing, always has enough money to pay for groceries, and has plenty of love to give Ellen and the other children she fosters. Mama's Mama, Ellen's grandmother on her mother's side, is old and miserly and treats Ellen with cruelty, as she strongly dislikes Ellen's father and seeks vengeance on him through Ellen. After winning custody of Ellen in court, she immediately sends her to work the fields with the black field hands on the farms she owns in the scorching summer heat. At the end of the summer, she dies of illness, even after Ellen has taken extraordinary good care of her. Mavis, a kind field worker on Ellen's grandmother's farm, takes