The protagonist of the novel, Sandy (so named because of his unusual brown hair) goes from being a naïve young boy to a teenager over the course of the novel. Sandy is an only child who struggles to understand the tensions between the members of his family and how to respond to the competing dreams members of his family have for him.

A primary influence in Sandy’s life is Hager, his grandmother. As an only child in her house, Sandy learns the value of hard work, Christian faith, and the importance of becoming a great African-American man and a leader for his people. He is forced to call these values into question by his Aunt Tempy’s ideas of racial uplift—which emphasize materialism and imitation of whites—and by the pressures of trying to succeed in a world of Jim Crow laws that block most avenues of success for young African Americans. Beyond those pressures is Sandy’s fear that he will become a man like his father, Jimboy, who never manages to stay employed for long and is frequently absent as a father and husband. Sandy ultimately decides to pursue his dreams for education in defiance of his mother’s short-sighted emphasis on living for today and just making a living.