In Light in August Reverend Hightower's mother is the daughter of a genteel church-going couple without substantial means. By the time she has her first and only child, she has been an invalid for almost twenty years, possibly because she was malnourished during the Civil War.
The son of one Gail Hightower and the father of another, this man is never given a first name in Light in August. A "man of spartan sobriety" (472), in the years before the Civil War he "rides sixteen miles each Sunday to preach in a small Presbyterian chapel back in the hills" (468). He also opposes slavery and refuses to be served by his father's slaves.
In Light in August, Reverend Gail Hightower's grandfather and namesake was a lawyer who owned slaves. Alive he was a "hale, bluff, rednosed man with the moustache of a brigand chief" (471), and a "thorn in his son's side" - because his son was an abolitionist. He is killed during the Civil War while on a cavalry raid against Union stores in Jefferson.
In Light in August Halliday is the resident of Mottstown who recognizes Joe Christman and, after hitting him in the face, captures him in the hope of claiming the thousand dollar reward.
Light in August says that Grove McKinley's wife was "labor- and childridden," so the couple probably had more than the three sons who are specifically referred to (5). Because their mother is always either "lying in or recovering," Lena takes care of these boys; like Lena, they sleep in the "leanto room" attached to the McKinley house (5).
In Light in August 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.
In Light in August 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 is at the center of one of the three major plot lines in Light in August. Born in Alabama in 1912, she moved to her brother's house at the age of twelve, after her parents died. When the novel begins, she is around 21 years old, more than eight months pregnant, and traveling alone and on foot to find Lucas Burch, the father of her unborn child. Lena is a patient, trusting soul who feels no shame at her condition; she is also self-reliant, asking for no one's help yet accepting it gratefully during four weeks of traveling.
In Light in August 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.
In Light in August Lena Grove's father dies in the same summer as her mother 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.
