CHARACTER
Before We Were Yoursby Lisa Wingate

Rill Foss (May Crandall)

Rill Floss (May Crandall)

Rill Foss (later known as May Weathers and, in old age, May Crandall) is the beating heart of Before We Were Yours. As the novel’s historical narrator, she bears witness to the theft and trafficking of river children and, decades later, becomes the fragile keeper of a family secret whose revelation reshapes multiple lives.

Quick Facts

  • Role: Historical narrator; survivor of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society; catalyst for the present-day mystery through her elderly persona, May Crandall
  • First appearance: Chapter 1 (as May Crandall); Chapter 2 (as Rill Foss)
  • Home and origin: The shantyboat Arcadia on the Mississippi River
  • Family: Parents Queenie Foss and Briny Foss; siblings Camellia, Lark, Fern (adopted as Judy Stafford (Fern Foss)), and Gabion
  • Key relationships: Avery Stafford (present-day investigator), Silas (childhood friend and first love), Georgia Tann (antagonist)
  • Distinctive details: As a child, “thin and knobby as a front porch post” with her mother’s “lovely golden curls.” In old age, thick gray hair braided around her head and hydrangea-blue eyes—visual threads stitching her past to her present.

Who They Are

At twelve, Rill is both child and captain—second only to her river-pilot father aboard the Arcadia. Her voice blends wonder and grit, mapping a world where play turns to peril overnight. As May Crandall, she is the memory-keeper who spent a lifetime refusing her own history until a chance encounter with Avery pulls the past to the surface. Her story turns on the tension between survival and self-erasure; the novel uses her divided identity to probe loss, recovery, and The Enduring Power of Family Bonds.

Personality & Traits

Rill’s personality is defined by protective leadership forged too young, courage that hardens under cruelty, and a sharp intuition that reads danger before it strikes. As May, those same strengths calcify into secrecy and self-reliance—tools that kept her alive but fenced her off from healing.

  • Protective and responsible: She treats Briny’s charge to “Keep care of everybody” as a sacred commission, organizing her siblings, shielding them from abuse, and bargaining with adults who hold all the power. Her enduring guilt—especially over losses she couldn’t prevent—reveals how responsibility curdled into self-blame.
  • Resilient and brave: From resisting bullies in the home to plotting escapes, Rill acts even when action seems futile. Her later ability to build a stable life for herself and Fern (Judy) shows that resilience is not just endurance—it’s the will to shape a gentler future after devastation.
  • Perceptive: She names her intuition a “knowing in me,” quickly discerning the lies of supposed benefactors and reading the grim economics of the “adoptions” around her. This perceptiveness underscores how children in peril become expert interpreters of adult duplicity.
  • Haunted: As May, she lives under the weight of Secrets and Their Consequences. Her withdrawn habits and fragmented memories aren’t weakness; they’re survival strategies that delay—but cannot deny—the reckoning with her past.

Character Journey

Rill’s arc is a carefully charted drift from river freedom to institutional captivity, then to a self-fashioned life that requires burying her original name. After the abduction, she is systematically remade: shorn of family, renamed May Weathers by Georgia Tann, and taught to doubt her own history—a brutal initiation into the novel’s The Search for Identity and Truth. Her attempts to keep the siblings together fail under forces stronger than love alone, and the destruction of the Arcadia closes the door on the world that formed her. Choosing Fern’s safety over her own identity, she lets “Rill Foss” die so “May Weathers” can survive. Decades later, as May Crandall, she has built a respectable life but remains emotionally adrift. Meeting Avery reopens the sealed compartment of memory, and, in telling the truth, she reunites with Fern and finally integrates the halves of herself—river child and adopted woman—into a self that can bear both love and loss.

Key Relationships

  • Her siblings: Rill’s moral universe orbits Camellia, Lark, Fern, and baby Gabion; every decision she makes is calibrated to their safety. Her bond with Fern endures beyond the system that separates the others; raising Fern after adoption cements Rill’s evolution from sister to surrogate mother and becomes the emotional hinge of the novel.
  • Avery Stafford: Avery is the living key to a locked room in May’s mind. The recognition of shared family traits sparks Avery’s investigation, and May’s guarded disclosures guide Avery toward the truth that ultimately reconnects the sisters and redeems a silenced history.
  • Silas: Silas represents the river life Rill loved and the unclaimed future she forfeits. His attempted rescue is a flash of pure possibility; their parting marks Rill’s acceptance that saving Fern requires surrendering the girl she had been.

Defining Moments

Rill’s story crystallizes in scenes where love collides with power—and where identity is stolen, bartered, or reclaimed.

  • The abduction (Chapter 6-10 Summary): Police remove the Foss children from the Arcadia, brutally ending their childhood. Why it matters: It inaugurates Rill’s forced leadership and exposes the machinery that converts poverty into profit.
  • The “viewing party” (Chapter 11-15 Summary): Rill watches her baby brother, Gabion, displayed and taken by wealthy strangers. Why it matters: The scene lays bare the Corruption of Power and Exploitation of the Vulnerable, teaching Rill that love cannot outbid money in Tann’s marketplace.
  • The destruction of the Arcadia (Chapter 21-25 Summary): After a desperate reunion, Briny drunkenly sets their boat adrift; the storm and his disappearance sever the last tie to Rill’s origin. Why it matters: With the Arcadia gone, Rill chooses survival over self, allowing “May Weathers” to take the helm.
  • Meeting Avery (Chapter 1-5 Summary): In the nursing home, May’s whisper of “Fern?” collapses time. Why it matters: The past intrudes on the present, forcing truth into the open and beginning the process of restoration.

Essential Quotes

“You watch over the babies, Rill. Keep care of everybody, till we get back—Queenie and me.” — Briny Foss, Chapter 4
This is the charge that defines Rill’s childhood. It sanctifies her protective role and explains her lifelong guilt: every loss feels like a broken promise, even when the breaking was done by others.

“We’ll call you something proper. A real name for a real girl. May will do. May Weathers.” — Georgia Tann, Chapter 8
Renaming is theft masquerading as benevolence. Tann’s casual decree reveals how language enforces power, converting children into products and identities into inventory.

Rill Foss can’t breathe in this place. She doesn’t live here. Only May Weathers does. Rill Foss lives down on the river. She’s the princess of Kingdom Arcadia. — Rill’s internal thoughts, Chapter 14
This interior split dramatizes dissociation as survival. Rill clings to a mental homeland (Kingdom Arcadia) while a new persona is installed to endure captivity.

Rill Foss has to die with it. I’m May Weathers now. — Rill’s internal thoughts, Chapter 24
The line is both surrender and strategy. In letting “Rill” die, she preserves Fern’s future; the ethical cost of that choice shadows her until she can reclaim her story.

“A woman’s past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses. Her own music. To hear the tune, she must only stop talking. To herself, I mean. We’re always trying to persuade ourselves of things.” — May Crandall, Chapter 25
Older May reframes survival not as silence but as listening—especially to the truths she long refused to hear. The counsel she offers others is the invitation she finally accepts herself, allowing the past to inform, not imprison, her future.