Abilene Tucker is the novel’s main character. When the story begins, she is 12 years old, newly separated for the summer from her father, and confused about why he sent her to Manifest, Kansas. She is precocious, friendly, and curious and has a journalistic temperament. Abilene is tough but insecure under scrutiny. She loves to solve mysteries and study people. She demonstrates her hard-won knowledge of the best way to jump off a train that’s still moving, characterizing her as someone who is always on the move.

Abilene’s defining characteristic for most of the novel is her status as either an outsider or intruder. She is never part of a community and is always the new girl, as she illustrates when introducing herself at school: “‘Well, I’m Abilene. I’m twelve years old and a hard worker,’ like I had a hundred other times in as many towns” (12). She is also adaptable, as she shows when she adopts the town dialect.

Abilene is confident and tough as long as she’s moving in the routines of the life she knows. She is reluctant to rely on others, but once she arrives in Manifest, things are different. Abilene is on her own, and as quickly becomes apparent, she doesn’t know much about her father.