The Last Runaway

Content Warning: This section references slavery, racism, deaths of family members, and violence (including racist violence and gun violence).

Honor Bright, later Honor Haymaker, is the narrator and protagonist of The Last Runaway. She is a British Quaker who comes to the United States after her failed engagement has made her the subject of gossip in an insular English Quaker community. When her sister, Grace, dies soon after their arrival in the United States, Honor finds herself uncertain of her place in her new country. She spends much of the novel longing for what she has left behind and regularly identifies The Differences Between America and England with disdain. She laments her own dissatisfaction with her new surroundings but struggles to put in any concentrated effort to improve her perception of the world around her.

Honor is quiet and soft-spoken, though she is opinionated in her letters and thoughts. She wishes to be neither proud nor judgmental, though she regularly thinks of her superior skill at quilting and her unflattering opinions of others’ housekeeping methods. She is determined in her convictions, particularly her firm abolitionism; unlike other white people she meets in America who espouse anti-slavery values, Honor is not swayed by arguments on why abolition is impractical.