Pearl PeceĮva’s youngest daughter and namesake (her name is also Eva although she is called Pearl). Eva owns a large home on Carpenter’s Road where she houses many boarders and family members. She mysteriously loses one of her legs after she is left by her husband BoyBoy.

Eva PeaceĮva is the mother of three: Hannah, Pearl, and Ralph (or Plum). Hannah is known in the Bottom for sleeping with many men, married or unmarried. Hannah is Sula’s mother and Eva’s eldest child. Sula has a birthmark on her eyelid that many think resembles a rose and a stem. She is a close childhood friend of Nel Wright. The daughter of Hannah Peace and granddaughter of Eva Peace. When Cecile falls ill and dies Helene takes her daughter Nel with her to New Orleans to say her last goodbyes. She raises Helene in a religious and strict home and cautions her against taking after Rochelle, Helene’s mother. Cecile SabatĬecile is the great aunt of Wiley and grandmother to Helene.

Wiley spends a lot of time away from home as chef on a ship company called the Great Lakes Line. He is also Helene Sabat’s husband and Nel’s father. Wiley Wright is the great nephew of Cecile Sabat. The family lives in a nice house in the Bottom. She marries Wiley Wright and gives birth to daughter Nel after 9 years of marriage. Raised in a strictly religious home, Helene grows up to be authoritative and devout. She is taken away from her birth mother, Rochelle, a Creole prostitute, by her grandmother Cecile Sabat. Helene is born behind the red shutters at the Sundown House, a place of prostitution. After graduating from school, Nel marries Jude Greene. Nel is the daughter of Wiley and Helene Wright. On January 3 every year, in observance of National Suicide Day, he parades through the Bottom with a cowbell and lets everyone know that they may kill themselves or one another. He lives in a shack previously owned by his long deceased grandfather. A survivor of battle, Shadrack was hospitalized for over a year before he returned to the Bottom. Founder of National Suicide Day, Shadrack is a veteran of war.

Sula eva