The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

McKinley Grove's wife is described as "labor- and childridden," spending "almost half of every year either pregant or "recovering" (5), so it is not surprising that she discovers her sister-in-law Lena's pregnancy and tells McKinley about it.

McKinley Grove brings his twelve-year-old sister Lena to live with his family in Doane's Mill, Alabama, after the death of their parents. He is "just forty" years old and "twenty years her senior" (5), which gives him a birth date in 1892. "He was a hard man": when his wife tells him that Lena is pregnant, he "calls her whore," (6), after which Lena leaves Doane's Mill in search of her baby's father.

Lena Grove's mother dies in the same summer as Lena's father does, when Lena is twelve years old. Both parents have impressed upon her a sense of filial duty; she takes care of her father at her mother's dying request and goes to live with her brother McKinley in accordance with her father's wish.

Lena Grove's father dies in the same summer as her mother does (1924), when Lena is twelve years old. Both parents have impressed upon her a sense of filial duty; she takes care of her father at her mother's dying request and goes to live with her brother McKinley in accordance with her father's wish.

V.K. Suratt's "oldest brother" appears briefly in the novel as the person who taught him how "to chop cotton" fast if he wanted to keep from losing his toes (137).