Protagonist:

Jane Petersburg is a 14-year-old girl who has just moved to Africa with her mom Zoe, her older sister Leila, 16 and her older brother Adrian, 17. Her dad abandoned their family when Jane was born. Jane has no urge to find her father because she doesn’t think she could ever like a man who left his family. Her mom is studying the animals in a small village in Africa. Their family will move to a bigger city before the summer is over. It is the summer before Jane will start at an international high school as a freshman. Her brother will soon leave for college in London.

Jane is a tall, thin girl, with really long reddish/brownish hair and bright green eyes. She loves being outside and she loves the heat. She walks around the town in flip-flops, a tank top, and cargo shorts. She hasn’t made any friends that are her age yet because they just moved to Africa. She has learned some basics of the language that the villagers speak. She usually talks to all the people working with her mom. She usually wears her hair up but occasionally she will leave it down. Back in Oregon, where Jane used to live, her friends always thought of her as adventurous. She was always the first one with an exciting idea. She was almost always happy, except for when she worried about her mom. Jane was always worrying if her mom was really happy. Zoe, Jane’s mom always assured her children that she was fine but it was hard to know that in a few years she would be by herself. Jane hates that her brother is always flirting with the native girls and she hates that all her sister wants to do is talk or text on her phone all day to her friends back home. Jane hates being home alone. She is scared of almost nothing else but she cannot be home alone. Jane is always afraid that if her family leaves, they won’t come back. Though Jane doesn’t ever tell anyone, she blames herself for her dad leaving. She realizes that he stayed when Leila and Adrian were born but once Jane was born, he left.

Jane has two main flaws. One is that she is very impatient. She hates waiting for people. She is always on her feet, ready to go, so when people take longer than her, she gets annoyed. This is the first thing that leads her too far away from the village when she gets captured. Her sister Leila was taking too long looking at something when Jane slips away. Leila sees the tribe take Jane away but she is too late. Jane’s other flaw is that at times, she is too curious. This is the other thing that leads her to being captured. She wasn’t thinking about anything else but exploring because she was so curious about everything in Africa. Then the tribe thinks that she is spying on them, so they capture her.


Antagonist- Abuto
Abuto is Jane’s main capturer. He was born and raised in Africa. He was born into the tribe. He was brought up to be aggressive and would do anything to help his tribe. He thinks that if he captures this young girl, the Chief will pay more attention to him. He has many flaws but the two main ones are his need to please people and he is too aggressive. All Abuto has ever known is to be aggressive. He has to catch food, protect his tribe, and if anything threatens that, he will chase it down. Abuto thinks The Girl as he calls Jane, is planning something against Abuto’s tribe. He thinks that their enemy tribe sent a foreign girl to confuse his tribe. What Abuto doesn’t know is that Jane really is just a foreign girl and she is not planning something against Abuto’s tribe.