Rose Lee Carter is the protagonist and narrator of Midnight Without a Moon. Intelligent, sarcastic, and analytical, the 13-year-old dreams of moving north with the thousands establishing themselves in the growing cities across the nation. She hopes to pursue a profession in medicine or law and return to Mississippi to serve her community. Rose lives with her grandparents, Papa and Ma Pearl, in a small house on land belonging to their employers, the Robinson family. Rose works in the fields with her grandfather and brother, picking approximately 70 pounds of cotton each day. When she isn’t laboring outdoors, she is performing one of the many household chores assigned to her by her grandmother. Rose’s workload increases when her grandmother decides it is time for her to stop attending school. Rose and her brother were surrendered by their mother, Anna, who gave birth to them in her teens and left them with her parents to marry an affluent man with two children, who she raises as her own. When Rose was born, her Aunt Belle named her Rosa, which appears on her birth certificate, but she is called Rose because Ma Pearl insists that Rosa isn’t a real name.