June Tolliver

Quick Facts

• Role: Pivotal maternal figure; mother of Tiger Tolliver
• First appearance: Opening chapter (dies suddenly of a brain aneurysm)
• Status: Deceased; remains central through memories, secrets, and a posthumous video
• Key relationships: Tiger; best friend Bonita; Dustin “Dusty” Franklin (Tiger’s father); parents Ed and Crystal Tolliver
• Themes she illuminates: identity, grief, the foster care system
• Physical presence: Short, light “mop” of hair; creamy, blemish-free face; small, delicate bust (“like tiny overturned teacups”). Her appearance, so unlike Tiger’s, quietly points to the mystery of Tiger’s father and the secrets June keeps.

Who They Are

Bold, loving, and deeply anxious, June Tolliver is the kind of mother whose devotion can feel like a shelter and a cage at once. A champion improviser of life, she turns scarcity into creativity—repurposing found clothes, selling jams from the Jellymobile—while anchoring her home in rituals of coffee, cigarettes, and 70s folk music. Even in death, June is a force: the unseen hand shaping Tiger’s choices, the puzzle whose missing pieces push Tiger toward a new understanding of love, loss, and selfhood.

Personality & Traits

June’s personality is a braid of warmth and wariness. Her exuberant love collides with a fear of harm and abandonment, producing a protectiveness that often smothers. The very traits that make her radiant—tenderness, ingenuity, humor—also mask the trauma she refuses to voice.

• Overprotective and stifling: She bans gymnastics and skateboarding and panics over a school dance, trying to keep Tiger safe by keeping her close. What looks like control is really vigilance born of loss; she’s policing the world because she can’t bear another catastrophe.
• Loving and affirming: June floods Tiger with praise—calling her “wondrous,” insisting she never hide herself. She and Bonita pledge to “Build a Better Girl Than They Were,” channeling their own unmet needs into intentional mothering.
• Secretive: “Tight-lipped” about her youth, June lies that her parents died when she was in college and refuses to discuss Tiger’s father. Silence becomes her defense, a way to rewrite pain and protect Tiger from the chaos behind her origin.
• Resourceful and creative: The Jellymobile and roadside clothing finds become art projects rather than evidence of struggle. June reframes scarcity as style, teaching Tiger that dignity can be handmade.
• Habitual and sensory: Coffee, cigarettes, and 70s folk music create the texture of home. These habits lodge June in Tiger’s senses, making her absence physically palpable.

Character Journey

June doesn’t change in the present; Tiger’s understanding of her does. Early memories cast June as the suffocating, if lovable, gatekeeper of Tiger’s life. After her death, artifacts—an old shoebox of photos revealing June as a prizewinning equestrian, whispered stories from Bonita, the final video confession—reassemble her into someone at once braver and more wounded. The revelation that June lost her parents at eleven and was shuttled among relatives reframes her “control” as a trauma response: if she kept Tiger close, maybe abandonment could never happen again. Even her secrecy about Dustin Franklin reads differently—less shame, more ferocious curation of a safer story. In the end, June’s posthumous honesty allows Tiger to love her mother as a whole person, not just a parent, and to carry forward the best of June without inheriting her fear.

Key Relationships

Tiger Tolliver June and Tiger are a self-declared “well-oiled…machine,” a two-person family defined by intimacy and friction. June’s devotion fuels Tiger’s confidence, but her anxiety curtails Tiger’s independence—especially around the Memorial Days dance—creating the guilt and grief that haunt Tiger after June’s sudden death.

Dustin “Dusty” Franklin June’s former partner and Tiger’s hidden father, Dusty is a history teacher with a drinking problem whom June ultimately leaves. Keeping Dusty secret reflects June’s instinct to protect Tiger from harm and shame; when the truth emerges, it complicates Tiger’s sense of self while illuminating the costs of June’s silence.

Bonita Best friend and confidante, Bonita shares June’s project to “Build a Better Girl.” She knows pieces of June’s past and later helps Tiger access the truth about her father, embodying the chosen family June relied on when her biological family failed her.

Ed and Crystal Tolliver June tells Tiger her parents died when she was in college; in truth, they died when she was eleven. That early rupture seeds June’s lifelong fear of abandonment and drives her cling-to-love parenting style, shaping every decision she makes about Tiger.

Defining Moments

June’s most important scenes arrive through memory and revelation; each recontextualizes her love as the product of survival.

• The opening fight (Memorial Days dance): Their argument crystallizes the push-pull of love and autonomy—the daughter who longs to step out, the mother who can’t let go. Its timing turns ordinary conflict into lifelong regret after June’s death.
• The final phone call: June’s excited news about buying a dress collides with Tiger’s frustration, ending with, “Why can’t you ever just fucking leave me alone?” This exchange becomes the nucleus of Tiger’s guilt, showing how grief magnifies the most human missteps.
• The shoebox of equestrian photos: A secret childhood of joy and achievement surfaces, revealing how much of herself June buried. It proves she didn’t abandon ambition—she redirected it into mothering.
• The posthumous video: June finally tells the truth about losing her parents and being passed among relatives. Her confession reframes control as care and offers Tiger a blueprint for forgiving the past without repeating it.

Essential Quotes

“We’re what my mom likes to call ‘a well-oiled, good-looking, and good-smelling machine.’”

• This shared motto captures the duo’s codependence: efficiency, intimacy, and pride in their tiny unit. It reads as affectionate bravado—and, after June’s death, as a painful reminder of how much of Tiger’s identity was built around being part of that “machine.”

“You’re a beautiful girl. I was just teasing, which I shouldn’t have done. You should never hide you. You’re growing into something wondrous. Don’t be ashamed.”

• June’s spontaneous repair work shows how fiercely she tries to inoculate Tiger against shame. The word “wondrous” is pure June: extravagant, sincere, and intended to fill the holes she still carries from her own unloved childhood.

“Once I overheard her say to Bonita, ‘I try to tell Tiger all the things I never got to hear, you know?’”

• A quiet thesis statement for June’s parenting. She cannot rewrite her past, so she scripts Tiger’s present with the affirmations she lacked—love as deliberate practice, not just feeling.

“June here! Tell me something good, or don’t say anything at all.”

• Half joke, half mantra, this greeting reveals June’s insistence on positivity as a coping style. It’s charming on the surface and telling underneath: good news becomes a shield against chaos.

“Hi, Gracie... If you’re watching this, I’m gone... Before I start, I need you to know, wherever I am, I am with you, Gracie, I promise you. I will always be right next to you, even if you can’t see me, okay?”

• The video fuses comfort with confession. By promising presence even in absence, June grants Tiger permission to move forward without abandoning her mother—an emotional anchor that turns memory from a weight into a guide.