Squirm

Summer is a 14-year-old girl who is a member of the Crow tribe. She is also Dennis Dickens’s stepdaughter. When Billy comes searching for his father in Montana, Summer makes him feel like a part of the family. She has a breezy personality and is as interested in helping wildlife as Dennis and Billy are. Summer has taken on more responsibility than she should for her age since she handles her stepfather’s finances and makes sure that the Dickens family receives monthly payments to meet their financial needs.

Summer’s biological father is a Lakota man who was abusive to her mother and is now in jail. By comparison, Summer thinks that Dennis is a much better parent. She discovered her stepfather’s secret years earlier and now uses that information to blackmail him into bringing her to Florida to help stop an illegal panther hunt. She is willing to take risks and is a capable partner for Billy when the two teens find themselves facing danger in the Montana wilderness at the climax of the novel. By the end of the story, Summer has made friends with the entire Dickens family and remains in contact with her new stepbrother long after their adventure ends.

Lil is a middle-aged woman who is a member of the Crow tribe. She was previously involved in an abusive relationship with Summer’s father but has since found happiness in her marriage to Dennis. Lil works as a professional trout guide, rowing fishing groups around the local rivers. Like Summer, Lil figured out Dennis’s secret identity years earlier but never confronted him about his odd behavior. She believes that her husband is a good man and is therefore tolerant when Billy arrives unexpectedly. She is also welcoming of Billy’s mother and sister when the rest of the Dickens family comes to Montana to visit. She manages to forge a harmonious relationship with Chrissie and isn’t threatened by Dennis’s renewed involvement with the family he abandoned.

Dennis has an erratic temperament. As a young man, he repeatedly quit good jobs because he felt stifled, and he eventually abandoned his wife and two children for the same reason. Dennis has difficulty facing conflict, so he never got back in touch with Chrissie for a decade after he left. While he is overcome with guilt and shame over this decision, he also feels a sense of responsibility to his original family. When his rich aunt dies and leaves him a fortune, Dennis uses the money to support his two families and to pursue his passion for disrupting illegal game hunts.

Although Dennis has functioned principally as a loner, Billy’s arrival forces him to readjust his behavior. He soon finds that the assistance of Summer and Billy makes it possible for him to thwart the illegal activities the game hunter, Baxter, who hunts endangered species. By the end of the novel, Dennis continues to pursue his interest in protecting the environment, but he does so with the support of both of his families.

Just as Dennis has his quirks, so does his first wife, Chrissie. She is obsessed with bald eagle nests and spends her free time birdwatching. Whenever a nest in a particular area is abandoned, Chrissie is fully prepared to uproot her children and move to a new location somewhere else in Florida to find a new nest to observe. She supports herself as an Uber driver to supplement the checks she receives each month from Dennis. When Billy shows some curiosity about his father, she initially discourages his interest and blocks his attempts at contact, believing that Dennis should make the first move.

Although Chrissie is hesitant, she allows Billy to fly to Montana to meet his father, not realizing that the encounter will have many unforeseen repercussions. Later, both Dennis and Billy continue their deception about going camping rather than telling her that they are stalking a dangerous hunter in the Everglades. Yet despite her relative ignorance of what her son and ex-husband are up to, Chrissie proves just as adaptable as Lil in dealing with the complexities of two families trying to strike a balance together. In the end, she succeeds and may remain in Fort Pierce to give Billy a chance to feel at home somewhere for a change.

Belinda is Billy’s older sister. She is primarily interested in her boyfriend and in social media. Like Billy, she doesn’t care for her mother’s erratic ways and would prefer to remain in one spot. She is looking forward to going away to college because this will give her life some stability. Initially, she is hostile when Dennis tries to reconcile with his family. She also worries that her mother might want to get back together with him. Despite her initial doubts, Belinda is able to form a bond with Lil and Summer. She even comes to regard her father kindly by the end of the novel. She also has the good sense to dump her boyfriend, who showed no remorse over his cruel desire to target a neighbor’s cat with a slingshot.

Baxter comes from a wealthy California family but spends most of his time pursuing his favorite hobby: killing endangered animals. This illegal activity gives him a thrill because there are so few of these animals left, and he wants to get the chance to shoot them himself before such species become extinct. He has the money to indulge in this repulsive hobby and offers large cash incentives to those who will help arrange hunts for him. Thus, Baxter serves a symbolic role in the story, for he represents any big-game hunter who shows a similar lack of regard for wildlife and the ecosystem. As the major antagonist of the novel, his purpose as a character is to demonstrate the deeply problematic nature of the prevalent pastime of killing animals for sport.

After Dennis thwarts Baxter’s attempts to kill a grizzly and later a panther, Baxter decides to get even by luring Dennis into a trap and using him as bait to attract a hungry grizzly in Montana. Fortunately, Billy and Summer foil his scheme and sabotage his helicopter so that he cannot escape the consequences of his actions. He ultimately goes missing in the wild, and the narrative hints that he might have been killed and eaten by a grizzly bear. Summer in particular believes this to be his fate, for as she comments, “Nature always gets the last word” (270). 

Daisy is Baxter’s wife. Although she is an expert shot, she doesn’t enjoy killing wildlife. When Dennis alerts her to Baxter’s secret hunting trips, she agrees to serve as an informant and supplies Dennis with real-time information on Baxter’s hunting plans. At the end of the novel, when she finds out that her husband was trying to kill Dennis himself, Daisy begins divorce proceedings. However, since Baxter has disappeared without a trace, it’s quite possible that Mother Nature has taken care of the problem for her.

Axel is a tough-looking Texan who trains Walker hounds. He specializes in producing dogs who can track their prey silently. His pack is in high demand for those who want to get rid of big cats that attack livestock. Axel is initially fooled into thinking that Baxter wants to hire him for a raccoon hunt. When he discovers that Baxter wants to kill an endangered Florida panther, Burnside returns his $20,000 fee and refuses to help the hunter. His behavior restores Billy’s faith that some people still follow a code of ethics in their personal lives.