Leda Levine
Our heroine Leda was born in 1995 in the quaint and progressive town of Albany, California, just outside of Berkeley, where people understood it was possible to be both Jewish and Chinese. She lived in a small but sweet house until her parents’ divorce. After that, she lived in a series of sad apartments until she was old enough to get out. Leda likes to try everything, and she believes there’s a solution to every problem.
Susannah Huang
aka Susannah Huang Levine, Susannah Huang Rothstein, Mom
Susannah moved to southern California from Taiwan with her family when she was six years old. Growing up in Pasadena, she was a golden child who showed great academic promise until she married Richard and dropped out of college to have her two children, Leda and Freddy. She converted to Judaism at the request of her mother-in-law and maintains a Jewish identity and religious practice even after her divorce, despite the fact that her ex-husband is basically an atheist if you really get down to it.
Richard Levine
Professor Levine grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and received his undergraduate degree from University of Pennsylvania and his doctorate in English from Yale. He is a professor in the English department at UC Berkeley, specializing in transatlantic Modernism. Some people including his children, Leda and Freddy, and their mother Susannah have suggested he has poor emotional intelligence, but he is working on it.
Alfred “Freddy” Levine
Freddy is basically cool with whatever. Mostly he likes to play massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) or listen to electronic music. He liked his old house better than the apartments his parents had after the divorce, but actually if you have a decent set of headphones and good wifi anything is basically tolerable.
ALISha Rao
Alisha is Leda’s oldest friend, and it’s good she’s around because Leda would probably go off the rails without her. Alisha loves whimsical nerdy stuff like fantasy novels and practical nerdy stuff like coding. This might seem like a contradiction, but actually she’s just fully aware that the world is a screwed up place that you need to both survive and, at times, escape.
Madeleine "Maddie” Harris-WalSham
Maddie is Leda’s other best friend, the fun one. Leda seriously needs to loosen up sometimes. However, being the fun one doesn’t mean Maddie’s not smart. In fact, some people would say she is too smart and that this leads her to act out in reckless ways, but she doesn’t believe in that type of vulgar armchair psychology. She’s an Aquarius and that’s probably all the information you need about all that.