Go Look There Character Profiles

Ephram Carson: Ephram has the most defined personality out of all my characters, and thus has been my favorite to write. Ephram is a bachelor with an old-man’s crush on Angelica. I tried to keep sex out of this story, but affection crept in and added a level I wasn’t expecting. I always felt that Ephram never married not because he wasn’t capable of it, but because he was too distracted by the tragedies he had witnessed, and spent most of his time pondering their purpose, origin, and effect on his hometown. Through his letters we see his self-consciousness about his southern culture, writing ability, and the stories he knows must be strange to outsiders like Angelica. Ephram is one of those men who cares about children in a way that never aproaches creepy or unusual. Ephram is a true lover of people, and that’s why the deaths in the community and the strange fate of Janey affect him so much. The butterflies brought about a supernatural change in the town, and Ephram spends his whole life trying to figure out how to put it right again. It’s almost as if his life is on hold until things are back to the way they should be. Ephram is perpetually waiting for the butterflies to return.

Angelica: Angelica M. Liederson is a northernor by birth who shares Ephram’s love of children. Angelica is drawn not to the care and protection of them, as Ephram is, but rather to their psyche. Angelica misses her own childhood and is forever trying to recapture the innocence and imagination present there. She’s traveled the country interviewing children and trying to gain their ‘golden’ stories from them. She initially contacts Ephram because she wants to know more about the strange case of Janey. They write to each other for a bit, then begin to meet up and exchange lore that way, though as readers we never witness this interaction. Angelica and Ephram’s story is told through their letters to each other, something therepeutic for Angelica because it allows her the medium of disclosing her own Janey-like story about a little girl in a mental institution. Angelica’s relationship with that girl as a student psychiatrist affects her entire life as much as Janey affected Ephram’s. That is their bond – they have both witnessed the magic and devestation that can happen to those newest to being human.

Others: Every character in this story is richly defined and unique, but as they are all different chapter to chapter I can’t give character profiles on them without giving away all the stories. Generally the other characters are children Ephram and Angelica have known. Each chapter tells the story of a child or a small group of children. Aside from the infamous Janey, we also have Sam, who is at least if not more interesting than Janey and who was also not only destroyed in connection with the butterflies, but known by Ephram personally. Others include Henry, poised at the brink of prepubescence and about to complete his disgusting initiation into the local elementary bike gang, Jake and Carlie, who believe so strongly in Jake’s ability to fly that they go to the top of a cliff to test it, Ezekiel, our oldest ‘child’ character, who goes to meet the Devil at a crossroads at midnight, Aaron and Michael, two boys exploring the open culverts at night when the flood comes, and finally Angelica’s first patient, a genius little girl named Shauna suffering from a severe case of sociopathy.