Valentine's Day 1946 - Characters

 These are the characters of this book for future reference:

SPOILERS!!!

Regular Characters

• Lillian Drooms Hapsey (41) is a main character in the series. She was a widow when she met Charles Drooms, who she is now married to. Lillian has two children, Tommy and Gabriel. Lillian’s dream is to be able to use her skills in drawing to make a living, and after working for the art department in Rockwell company, she finds a job as an illustrator for children’s books. Charles fought the war in Europe, and Lillian missed him with all her heart. Lillian and Charles have a daughter,Charlotte.
• Charles Drooms (50) is the second main character. Drooms used to live next door to Lillian, and that is how they met. He is attractive but have his own demons. Drooms was tortured for a long time by an episode in his childhood when his small siblings died while under his care after they fell into a frozen lake. Now Charles is back home after fighting in the war. 
• Tommy Drooms Hapsey is Lillian’s fourteen-year-old son. He is a tough boy and sometimes he loses his patience with his younger brother. He has a close relationship with Amy, but she is to  return to Ohio again. Now Tommy works in Mr Mancetti’s store.
• Gabriel Drooms Hapsey is Lillian’s eleven-year-old son. He is a very sweet and cheerful boy, but he tends to be a bit absent-minded and imaginative. He is also a bit of a clown, but he has a good heart. He has a weekend job in a curio shop, which he loves.
• Charlotte Drooms is Lillian and Charles’s 4-month-old daughter.
• Kate is Charles’s sister who lives in Illinois. She is a widow and has a farm. Her four sons joined the war, and the eldest, Francis, was killed. Kate has been running the farm with her daughters, Ursula and Jessica, but during the war they had the help of some German POWs.
• Ursula is Kate’s eldest daughter. She is tough and beautiful. Ursula wanted to go to university but her plans were crushed when the war broke out. Ursula was outraged when her mother decided to use some German POWs to help on the farm. Yet, she fell in love with one of the POWs, Friedrich, and she fell pregnant. Her brother Jimmy discovered it and was very upset and angry, but he eventually realised that what Ursula felt was genuine and decided to help her. Ursula and Friedrich married in secret thanks to Jimmy. Ursula has a son now, Frankie, and her family knows who the baby’s dad is.  In the the last book the epilogue set in 1948 shows that Friedrich returns and Ursula can finally have the life she has dreamed of.
• Friedrich is the German POW who falls for Ursula and Ursula falls for. Friedrich feels strongly against the Nazi regime. Ursula and Friedrich marry in secret, and in this book he is repatriated. Thankfully, he returns to Ursula and their son in 1948.
• Frankie is Ursula and Friedrich’s son.
• Jessica (17) is Ursula’s younger sister. She is a lovely girl. She supports her sister’s love for Friedrich, but she is okay with it. She is now in love with Clem, one of the local boys who return from the war. 
• Eugene is Kate’s son, who also fought the war. Kate received news that her son was missing and Kate finally got the news that Eugene was fine but recovering from some minor injuries in a hospital in France. He returned, after being demobbed. Eugene fell  in love with a nurse, Edna, and they got married.
• Clem Corrigan is the young man who Jessica is in love with. 
• Izzy Briggs is Lillian’s best friend. Izzy was engaged to Red, but they postponed the wedding when he volunteered to fight in England. Izzy got brokenhearted when Red wrote to her announcing that he had married the nurse who had looked after him when he was wounded. After her disappointment, Izzy decided to enjoy life and go out with GIOs, but she never found someone to love the way she loved Red. Izzy eventually discovered from Charles that Red’s marriage lasted merely a month, and Izzy started writing to him. In this book Izzy is in London with Red, but he feels he doesn't deserve her, but when Izzy finally talks to him about their love, they decide to marry on St Valentine's Day
• Red was the man who Izzy was engaged to. He left for England to fight in the war, and at the beginning of the war he was wounded. Red fell in love with his nurse and married her, and he didn’t tell Izzy for two months, leaving Izzy heartbroken. Izzy discovered that the marriage didn’t last long, and she started writing to him. 
• Edna Kinnan is the nurse that Eugene fell for and now they are married.
• Amy Little is the young girl who Tommy is sweet on. They have become good friends. Amy is determined and full of beans. Her parents are to return to Ohio, where they are originally from. Her father agrees to let her stay in New York until the end of the academic year.
• Ed is Kate’s farmhand 
• Jimmy is Kate’s son, who also fought in the war, and when he returned, he disapproved of the POWs on the farm. Yet, he gradually came to accept them. Jimmy was the first one to discover that Ursula was in love with Friedrich and pregnant. Jimmy also helped her to get married to Friedrich. Jimmy is now married to Gladys.
• Abe Creight is the man who replaced Otto as a guard for the POWs. He is a very sad man because his only son was killed in the war. He discovered that Ursula was in love with Friedrich, and at first, he disapproved. Creight helped Ursula, phoning the farm when he heard that Friedrich is to leave, and thanks to him, Ursula could say goodbye to him. In this book Jessica is convinced that Abe could be good to Mrs Fletcher, and even though he is more than reluctant at first to even talk to the woman, they eventually get together.
• Mrs Anne Fletcher lost her son in the war, and Clem is good to her, helping her and visiting her as he thinks she is lonely.  In this book Jessica thinks she and Abe could be good company to each other. 
• Mrs Martha Kuntzman is the neighbour that often babysits for Lillian. 
• Mr G is the owner of the curio shop Gabriel starts working in.
• Junior also works in the curio shop, and he writes down poems to be framed.
• Dusty is an egyptologist who also works in the curio shop.
• Henry Hankel is a volunteer in the hospital and Gabriel befriends him. Henry is in his seventies and comes from Germany.  Henry is sweet on Mrs Kuntzman and they start a relationship.
• Billy Kinney (11) is Gabriel’s best friend. Like Gabriel he is funny and a bit of a clown.
• Mickey Kinney (14) is Tommy’s best friend.
• Shirley Bloomfield is Jessica’s best friend. She is in a relationship with Burly.
• Sue Ellen Bloomfield is Shirley’s sister and she has always been interested in Joe Madden. Now they are engaged to marry.
• Ellen Bloomfield is Shirley and Sue Ellen’s mother.
• Joe Madden is a local man who has always wanted to court Ursula, but she has never been interested. So he is now with Sue Ellen and they plan to marry
• Donny is Clem’s nephew.
• Paul is another son of Kate and he also fought the war. In this book he gets together with Lucille, a local girl who he corresponded with during the war.
• Gustav was one of the POWs who helped on Kate’s farm. 
• Karl is another POW helping on Kate’s farm. When he was repatriated, he was sent to France, and died in an explosion in a mine.
• Otto Epstein used to have a farm but he rented out the land when he became too old for the work. During the war he was a volunteer, driving the POWs to the farm and acting as some kind of guard.
• Mr Rockwell is the general manager in the company Lillian worked for. Rockwell offered Lillian a job in the art department when he discovered her drawing skills. Rockwell and Izzy dated for a while, but it was not serious for either of them. He and his ex-wife eventually reconciled.
• Barbara Rockwell is Mr Rockwell’s wife.
• Gladys is Jimmy's wife
• Opal is Ed’s wife.
• Robert Mason is Drooms’s partner. Robert is married to Susan and lives with her, their children, his mother and his sisters.
• Mrs Mary Margaret Sullivan Murphy (64) is Mr Drooms’s office manager. Forty years ago she left the man she loved when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. When Margaret ran into him again, she felt so happy and she eventually told him the truth. Now Margaret is married to him.
• Mrs Huntington is the artistic director of a children’s books publishing company,who Lillian works for now.
• Mrs Kinney is Billy and Mickey’s mum.
• Mrs Wilson is a neighbour of Lillian’s.
• Annette is Lillian’s sister. She lives on a farm upstate.
• Abigail is Lillian’s niece.
• Bernie is Annette’s husband.
• Danny is Bernie’s nephew.
• Edith Mason is Masons’s sister, and with the men joining up, Charles decided to hire her in the office. Edith fell in love with an actor, Desmond. Edith had polio when she was younger, and because of her limp after the illness, she is very insecure. Years ago her fiancé left her because he didn’t want to marry a cripple, so that dented Edith’s confidence. Edith couldn’t help but believe that Desmond’s love was not forever and they had a crisis, but they eventually sorted out their issue and decided to be together.
• Desmond Burke is the actor Edith falls in love with. He proposed to Edith and she eventually agreed to marry him.
• Brendan Sullivan is the man who Mrs Murphy loved and abandoned forty years ago. Mrs Murphy got reacquainted with him when she ran into him in a department store where he was working as Santa. Brendan never understood why Mary had left him, and he got a shock to discover the truth. Now Brendan is married to Mary.
• Mrs Little is Amy’s mother.
• Susan Mason is Robert Mason’s wife. They have three children.
• Alice Mason is Mason’s youngest sister
• Helen Mason is Mason’s sister
• Helen Mason is Mason’s sister.
• Rachel was Charles’s childhood sweetheart. They were together when Charles’s siblings fell into the frozen lake and died. Charles has always blamed himself for getting distracted when he was with Rachel. Now Rachel is married and has a daughter.
• Mr Weeble was one of the managers in the company Lillian works for. Lillian always disliked him, but it was thanks to him that Mr Rockwell got to know about her talent and offered her a job in the art department. Now Mr Weeble is in London and Charles thinks he is working for the Intelligence Service.
• Tom Hapsey was Lillian’s husband. When they first married, he worked in a trolley company in New York, but then he lost his job because of the economic recess. Then he was employed in the fire brigade. Tom has been dead for four years.
• Mr and Mrs Mancetti  have a grocery store.