Sarah Smarsh is the author and one of the main protagonists of the narrative. Heartland is a memoir of her life as a poor white girl from the rural Midwest. It is also a testament to her family, who have worked hard for generations but have stayed in the cycle of poverty without being able to escape. 

Smarsh is in the difficult position of providing a glimpse into the reasons so many people stay in poverty, having escaped poverty herself. She uses family anecdotes to illustrate that the American Dream of hard work leading to success is not true, as so many systems and laws are stacked against those born into the lower class. However, she is careful to acknowledge that she was able to break the mold and solves this problem by explaining one of the truths she learned living in both worlds, as so few do. She knows that the socioeconomic divide “was about a difference of experience, not of humanity” (125).

Betty is Smarsh’s maternal grandmother. Unlike most of the other figures in Smarsh’s life, and although “Betty had plenty of good excuses to become a bitter, cynical person, she had somehow preserved her natural outlook on the world: that justice is worth fighting for, and the notion of a better life is always worth a shot” (253).