Ragtime characters

Appears from the start

The head of a prosperous New Rochelle household and owner of a business that makes patriotic novelties. He believes in order, exploration, and the established hierarchies of his era, assumptions that the changing world repeatedly unsettles.

Appears from the start

The capable center of the New Rochelle family. At first she appears confined to the domestic role expected of a wealthy wife, but she has a practical independence that becomes more visible when Father leaves on an expedition.

Appears from the start

Mother's intense, restless younger brother, who lives with the family and works in Father's fireworks business. He is fascinated by machinery, public spectacle, and figures who seem to embody a life more dramatic than his own.

Appears from the start

The observant young son of Mother and Father. He notices connections and impending changes that the adults around him often fail to understand.

Appears from the start

The celebrated escape artist and illusionist whose motorcar breaks down outside the family's New Rochelle home. Famous for surviving confinement, he remains preoccupied by death and by the limits of even his remarkable self-mastery.

First appears in chapter 4

A famous beauty and former chorus girl whose marriage to the wealthy Harry K. Thaw has placed her at the center of a sensational murder case. Her public image makes her an object of fascination to Mother's Younger Brother.

Also known as the Baron Ashkenazy

First appears in chapter 6

A Jewish immigrant artist from Latvia who supports his wife and young daughter by cutting paper silhouettes. Proud and inventive despite severe poverty, he is determined to preserve his family in an America that offers both exploitation and possibility.

First appears in chapter 6

Tateh's quiet young daughter, deeply attached to her father as the two try to make a life among the immigrant crowds of New York's Lower East Side.

First appears in chapter 10

A prominent anarchist and labor organizer who speaks directly about the economic forces behind private suffering. Her political clarity challenges Evelyn Nesbit's understanding of charity, wealth, and the attention her beauty attracts.

First appears in chapter 17

A frightened young Black woman whom Mother shelters after discovering her newborn child buried alive in the garden. Sarah initially refuses to explain herself or identify the baby's father.

First appears in chapter 21

A dignified Black pianist who arrives in a new Model T, seeking Sarah and their child. Formal, patient, and exceptionally gifted at the piano, he courts Sarah while insisting that she be treated with respect.

First appears in chapter 24

The chief of a volunteer fire company in New Rochelle. He and his men block Coalhouse's car and subject its owner to a deliberately humiliating racist confrontation.

First appears in chapter 38

The influential Black educator invited to help end the crisis at the Morgan Library. He appeals to Coalhouse's sense of responsibility and to the future of Black Americans while trying to secure a peaceful surrender.