Principal Characters

1) Andy, 1983 to present, seventh generation. Daughter to Barbara Anne(2) and Sammy(13), Andromeda Marie Winters. She is bright and took college courses in high school and graduated in 2004. Now however she feels free and is unwilling at this point to either find a ‘real’ job or return to school. "I am in no rush.", she says. When she announces she has a passport Cassandra(4) feels ill.

2) Electra, is the name she will known by during the story. Was born Barbara Anne, 1959. She was scared by what she saw of the 60's when she was growing up, but thought the 70's cooled off. She is bright and funny, but has mild depressive cycles, sister don’t we all? Sammy and she were married in 1982. Andy was born in 1983. "My mind just shuts off I was so grown up in 1984.", she says. She and Sammy split up in 1991. Went to court, changed her name to Electra Marie. It was not easy with her and Sammy for 10 years. Gradually they patch it up to friendship with an edge, or a row of buttons. She and Cassandra have an uneasy relationship that is fun sometimes but hugely frustrating at other times.

3) Gael Angeline Marie 1945 to present. She is half sister to Cassandra. She was there for the 60's in a way Cassandra had never experienced and therefore never understood. She was it all for womanhood. She is an artist and a lingering hippy. She had moved in with GG in 1972 and helped take care of her as she failed. She is there in GG’s house by default and becomes a weaver, in one room, a potter in the garage, and painter in the rest of the house. She will come across the legendary lavaliere and thus initiate the treasure hunt with Electra.

4) Cassandra Marie, 1938 to present. She spend’s less time with GG because she was older. She was 17 when her mother, Helen(5) died. She went to college and she did amazingly well in her courses and graduated magna cum laud. Practical and self sufficient. On the spur of the moment she had another graduation and found herself pregnant, then shortly engaged and shortly wed. She went back to school and was in two terms at once. The husband was in marketing and was a complete flop as a father, husband and marketer. After catching him In flagrante delicto, she divorced him, severed the relationship and found that she had pleased him more than was her intent. "Damn him!", she said. But this did not slow her ardor for banking. She had risen to president of the bank, there were only three other presidents, unlike someone who tells you they are a bank president nowadays. She is a republican, lapsed Presbyterian, and had come up through the 60's and 70's as a single mom, before it was one word.

5) Helen Lynne Marie, nee Hermann, 1911 to 1955. She was a wild one. A beauty that finished her life with cigarettes, drink and one spectacular car crash. She had two husbands; she divorced the first and the second divorced her. She had Cassandra by the first one and Gael by the second. She had been a spoiled child and was unprepared for either marriage or child rearing, she fought back with booze. These half sisters are raised by GG. Fourth generation.

6) Eurydice Marie, nee Eliot, Hermann, 1887 to 1975. She is also know as GG. She is 28 when her mother Rose Marie(8) dies in 1919. GG is the link back to the treasure. Her diaries and journals provide a large part of the story’s background; she will also communicate by means of the wax cylinder recordings. She is married to Henry Lloyd Hermann. Their daughter is Helen. HLH had cause to regret spoiling his only child. Hers is the house Gael lives in since coming there in 1972 to help out. This one of the estrangement issues between Gael and Cassandra. Third generation.

7) Ethel Marie Alexander, 1887 to 1953, is the last daughter of Nicholas(10) and Andromeda(9). She was proof of her father’s undying love for Mum. She will hear, growing up in the US of the travails of Merry Old England. The especially dreadful incident of the tomb of Violet Marie. Because she was such a late addition to the family she was a contemporary of Rose Marie’s daughter, Eurydice. Second generation.