Characters / Redeeming Love

Angel

Angel

• Break the Cutie: Sarah in the first chapters is a sweet little girl. Then, she finds out her father never wanted her and decides she's the cause of her mother's misery. Her mother gets kicked out of her house, becomes a prostitute, and dies. Sarah then witnesses a man being strangled to death and gets raped herself. She spends the next ten years as a Sex Slave, and her escape attempts only end up making her life even worse. Because of this all, she becomes a cold, cynical woman who believes people will only use her for their pleasure and there's nothing she can do to improve her life.
• The Bride with a Past: When Michael brings Angel home immediately following their marriage, his brother Paul recognizes Angel as a prostitute and, assuming Angel manipulated his clueless brother into the match without telling him about her trade, sets off in a rage to tell Michael. The subsequent fight they have reveals the brothers' large differences in philosophy which take almost the entire novel to resolve.
• Broken Bird: Angel is cold and very cynical as a result of her past abuse.
• Brutal Honesty: When she meets the Altmans, she tells them Michael has found her in a brothel, so they wouldn't have any shocking surprises down the road and wouldn't see her as a good person she thinks she isn't.
  Miriam: I know you’re honest. Brutally so.
• Deadpan Snarker: To cope with her miserable life and provoke people, Angel develops a sarcastic streak.
• Defiled Forever: After her time as a Sex Slave, Angel feels like she's filthy, "her whole body was fouled, inside and out." After she falls in love with Michael, she wishes she'd come to him whole and pure instead of the way she is.
• Defrosting the Ice Queen: Michael’s efforts on this front regarding Angel are downright heroic.
• Does Not Like Men: Angel hates them—mostly justified since the only men she knew well abandoned her, raped her, and sold her into prostitution, and almost every man she’s met since has only objectified her. In one of her encounters with Michael, she also comments that she’s always found men’s bodies “ugly”—again justified by the fact that pretty much every male body she’s ever seen up close has been in the process of effectually raping her.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Despite that she is actually deeply unhappy as a prostitute, Angel viciously blows off Michael’s attempts to show sympathy and kindness, taking it as a sign that he thinks she is weak.
• Feminine Women Can Cook: Averted. She's very good at looking and behaving like a lady, but she has next to no domestic skills because her pimps had seen no reason to teach her anything. This is a source of angst and frustration once she reaches a point where she wants to do something nice for Michael like make him dinner. Played straight later, when Michael teaches her, she gets enough practice and becomes quite skilled in the kitchen. She even acquires a job as a cook later on in the novel.
• Femme Fatale: Angel is not at all shy about using her beauty to get what she wants. Since this is the only way she knows how to get what she wants, however, it reveals how much of a Broken Bird she is. It’s a sign of immaturity and desperation rather than self-confidence or sophistication.
• Guilt Complex: Angel blames her mother's breakup with her father and her mother's subsequent death on herself. Then, she blames herself for being sold into prostitution and for everything done to her ever since.
• Head-Turning Beauty: People tend to stare when Angel walks past—she has to have a bodyguard to keep from being accosted—and there’s a reason the going rate for her services are four times any other woman’s.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Initially averted: Angel has magnificent golden hair but she is a cold and cynical Broken Bird. But as she defrosts, she becomes more empathetic and kind to people around her, especially children. Michael grows on her, she befriends the Altmans, and pulls I Want My Beloved to Be Happy on them. She opens House of Magdalena to help other Sex Slaves after she meets her former "colleague" and sees pain, loneliness, and despair in her eyes.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Averted. Due to being abused and sold into prostitution, she spends a significant portion of the novel as a very cold, selfish, and manipulative woman.
• Icy Blue Eyes: The cynical Broken Bird Angel has blue eyes.
• Insecure Love Interest: Halfway through the novel, Angel comes to love Michael but she's convinced she's undeserving of his love because she's Defiled Forever and can't have children.
• Internalized Categorism: Angel believes every nasty thing people say about her to be true: sure, she's Defiled Forever, her pretty face only hides how ugly she is on the inside, she'll only break Michael's heart, and once a prostitute, always a prostitute.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy:
  • The little Sarah only wants her mother to be happy. She sees herself as the cause of her mother's misery, so Sarah comes to the conclusion that she should have never been born.
  • Later in the novel, Angel leaves Michael for the third time because she believes that when she is gone, he will eventually marry Miriam and be able to have the children he desperately wants.
• Lie Back and Think of England: How Angel feels about sex. This causes conflict in her relationship with Michael, who believes that the emotional connection during sex is important.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Her real name is Sarah, which is the name of a woman from the Bible who for a long time had no home and was barren. In the end, she is miraculously able to have children.
  • During one of their first meetings, Michael calls her Mara. He explains plainly: "It means bitter."
  • One of the names Michael gives Angel is Tirzah, another Biblical name meaning “she is my delight” and was intended by Michael to be a meaningful and deliberate expression of love to his wife, in contrast to the superficial name she used as a prostitute, Angel, which was only meant to describe her physical beauty.
• Never Learned to Read: Angel's pimps had seen no reason to teach her. Later in the novel, one of her friends teaches her to read and write.
• Not So Stoic: The first time Angel is able to enjoy sex with Michael, she finds herself weeping.
• Parental Abandonment: Angel's mother dies when she is eight, and prior to this her father did not acknowledge her as his daughter, because she was illegitimate.
• Primal Fear: Angel is afraid of the dark, especially because it reminds her of the dark night when she witnessed a man being murdered and was sold into prostitution at the age of eight.
• Rape as Backstory: Angel is sold into prostitution at the age of eight.
• Ready for Lovemaking: Angel tries this on Michael in an attempt to seduce him shortly after they’re married; he refuses her because he knows she’s only trying to manipulate him. She tries it again sometime later, and he gives in; it can be inferred from later passages that this leads to them having sex at least somewhat regularly.
• The Runaway: Angel flees Michael more than once. For slightly different reasons each time, and to different places each time (see below).
• Scrubbing Off the Trauma: When she first begins to see that Michael is a genuinely good man, Angel feels she is unworthy of him; she plunges into a creek and frantically begins trying to make herself feel clean. Michael eventually finds her rubbing her skin raw with gravel and sobbing.
• Self-Harm: In an attempt to make herself clean, Angel plunges into an ice-cold creek and rubs her skin raw with gravel.
• Sex Slave: Angel was a prisoner in Duke’s brothel from the age of eight until she finally escaped ten years later. Her subsequent situation left her completely dependent on her madam, however, meaning this is still effectually in play until Michael marries her.
• Stepford Smiler: During the early part of the novel, Angel constantly acts like her cushy life as the most beautiful prostitute in town is all she could ever want, when in fact she’s deeply lonely and hates every minute of her work.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Sarah in the first chapters is a sweet, compassionate little girl who loves her mother deeply. Then, the cutie gets broken and grows into a cold and cynical woman.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: Angel is the most beautiful woman anywhere in the Gold Fever country where the story takes place.

Michael

Michael

• Beware the Nice Ones: Michael is typically a very polite, easygoing fellow—until he finds you undressed and on top of Angel.
  Does anyone else want to get between me and my wife?
• Celibate Hero: Michael is a virgin at the age of twenty-six (to Angel's amazement), and remains so for some time into their marriage.
• Dogged Nice Guy: Michael’s attempts to get Angel to marry him, as well as his later attempts to get her to stay with him.
• House Husband: He has been a bachelor living alone well into his twenties, and Angel learned next to no domestic skills during her life as a prostitute.
• Hunk: Michael is a farmer used to physical labor. He's manly, tanned, and well-muscled, and Angel eats an eye candy looking at him.
• Love at First Sight: Played with: The first time Michael sees Angel, he knows she’s the woman he’s going to marry, but it’s its a ways into their relationship before love (in the romantic sense) enters the picture. Has shades of Love Before First Sight, since he only glimpses Angel very briefly, she has not seen him, and he has no idea who she is.
• Love Martyr: Michael in his early relationship with Angel.
• Meaningful Name: Hosea is the name of a Biblical prophet who is commanded by God to marry a prostitute, and then take her back even after she is unfaithful to him. This is lampshaded in the book. (Hosea also means "God Saves", which is sort of the point of the whole story.)
• Messianic Archetype: He is a righteous man who endures quite some suffering to save Angel's lost soul.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Michael is the model of chivalry, but when bringing Angel back from the brothel to which she ran away after their wedding, he warns her not to speak on the way home because he’s so angry he might not be able to hold himself back from hurting her.

Paul

Paul

• Jerkass Realization: Near the end, Paul realizes that he's been self-righteous and cruel towards Angel.
  He sat for a long time, unable to speak, thinking of all the time and all the persecution she had endured. From him. And now she was apologizing. He had plotted her destruction and destroyed himself in the process. From that time, he had been consumed by hatred, blinded by it.
• Jerkass to One: Paul is not a bad man but he firmly believes Angel is deceiving Michael and will break his heart, so he harasses and insults her whenever he can.
• Love Makes You Evil: Downplayed platonic version. He cares about Michael deeply and believes Angel will break his heart, and this is one of the reasons why he's such a jerk to her.
• Never My Fault: Paul blames Angel for coming between him and his money because once he had thrown away his gold in an attempt to buy her in the Palace. Then, he blames her for coming between him and Michael, then for coming between him and Mariam because they love Angel while Paul's adamant on being a jerk to her.
• You Are What You Hate: Paul despises Angel because she sleeps with people outside of wedlock. He's visited brothels himself and pulls Sexual Extortion on her while knowing Michael is married to her. He has a Jerkass Realization in the end.

The Altmans

The Altmans

• Happily Married: Elizabeth and John Altman are married and treat each other with love and respect.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: The Altmans have six kids whom they cherish.
• Nice Guy: The Altmans are a whole family of kind, caring, and loving people. To her immense surprise, they accept and respect Angel in spite of knowing she used to be a hooker.
• Ready for Lovemaking: Miriam pulls this in a less overt way when she wants Paul to propose, in a scene rather like the story of Ruth and Boaz in The Bible.

Others

Others

• Beauty Is Bad: Alex Stafford, Angel's father, says she should have never been born and abandons her mother who has nowhere to go without him. Duke is a pimp, a pedophile, and a sadist. Both are described as Tall, Dark, and Handsome.
• Deadpan Snarker: Lucky is quick with a quip when quarreling with other prostitutes in the Duchess' brothel.
• Defiled Forever: At the beginning of the novel, Sarah's mother Mae becomes a victim of this attitude. She is in love with a married man and has a child by him, then he dumps her, and she has nowhere to go because her parents refuse to take her back. She ends up becoming a prostitute and dies in just a year.
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold:
  • Averted for most of Angel's "collegues" who are portrayed as rather mean and unfortunate women. Towards the end of the novel, however, at least one of them, Torie, is portrayed as a Broken Bird, just like Angel herself.
  • Played straight with Lucky, Angel's caring, supportive, and empathetic Only Friend.
• Ironic Nickname: Angel's Only Friend in the brothel is nicknamed Lucky. She's somewhat better adjusted than Angel but is still a Sex Slave and a drunkhead. She ends up burning alive in the fire in the Palace. Lucky, huh?
  • Also "Angel" was named for beauty, not kindness.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Duke never gets his comeuppance. When the mob of men realize that he's not just a pimp, but keeping a little girl as his sex slave, he flees, and it's unknown if they ever find him.
  • The Duchess, madam of the Palace, is never stated to get her comeuppance.
• Only Friend: At the beginning, Angel is cold and aloof towards everyone but Lucky, one of the prostitutes in the Palace. Lucky tries to cheer Angel up, snipes at other prostitutes when they are mean to Angel,and pleads with her to be careful. Angel, for her part, is still rather closed-off but with Lucky, she is as friendly as she gets; she even asks her not to drink so much, showing that she cares, too. When Angel gets beaten within the inch of death, Lucky figures out that Angel wanted to die and brings Michael to her as she knows he wanted to give Angel a better life.
• Pædo Hunt: Duke rapes little girls.

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