The main protagonist of the novel, Hiram spends his early youth growing up in Greenwood with his grandparents while his father finishes up school on the GI Bill. He falls in love with the Mississippi Delta, enjoying fishing excursions and his grandma’s southern cooking. His father is not keen on his being there, but there is really no other option at the time. Hiram grows close with his grandpa but is initially blind or at least not mature enough to truly be aware of his grandpa’s deep-seated racism. Eventually, Hiram’s family moves to Arizona and he misses Greenwood terribly. After his Grampa suffers a stroke, he goes back as a teenager to spend the summer with him. A few years older, he is able to more clearly assess the situation around him and see the issues of segregation and race relations that he did not before. In this time, he begins to relate more to his own father and desperately wishes not to have his paternal relationship resemble the one his father has with Grampa.