Caleb is the 10-year-old Black male protagonist and first-person viewpoint character of the novel. He lives in a three-bedroom house in Sutton, Indiana in contemporary times with his parents, 11-year-old brother Bobby Gene, and one-year-old baby sister Susie. Their home backs up to a patch of woods, and through the woods are back roads and farmland. Caleb lives close enough to the town of Sutton to get there by walking or riding his bike, but he is not allowed to go into town without permission from his parents. Caleb would like more freedom, as he feels that his parents have unreasonable expectations, rules, and guidelines that prevent him from doing whatever he wants. He is perturbed, for example, that his father will not allow school field trips to Indianapolis, the nearest large city—not even to visit the Children’s Museum. Caleb cannot understand why his father craves the ordinary, as Dad insists that the Franklin family should be grouped with “ordinary folks.” When Caleb sees distant places or interesting stories on the news, he knows there is no chance of anything out of the ordinary happening in Sutton. Even when he does something that shows talent or originality, his father can only tell him he is “extra-ordinary.