Dexter Green
Dexter Green, the story’s protagonist, begins the story as a class-conscious teenager in Black Bear, Minnesota, and Fitzgerald chronicles his maturation into a successful New York businessman. Despite this professional growth and achievement, Dexter doesn’t…
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Judy Jones
– Judy, the beautiful daughter of the wealthy Mortimer Jones, is Dexter’s obsessive love interest throughout the story. She first appears as a “beautifully ugly” eleven-year-old girl who tries to order Dexter…
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T.A. Hedrick
Hedrick is one of the wealthy people who plays on the Sherry Island Golf Course in the summers, and one of Dexter’s winter dreams is to defeat Hedrick in a game of golf. According…
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Mortimer Jones
– A wealthy patron of the Sherry Island Golf Club and Judy’s father. Jones takes particular interest in fourteen-year-old Dexter due to the boy’s exceptional work as a caddie and he is upset to learn…
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Devlin
A business associatewho visits Dexter in New York. Devlin is friends with Judy (whom Dexter has not seen in years), because he is best friends with her husband, Lud Simms. He casually mentions that…
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Get the entire Winter Dreams LitChart as a printable PDF.
Irene Scheerer
– Dexter’s fiancée whom Dexter describes as “light-haired and sweet and honorable, and a little stout.” Unlike Judy, she quickly gives up her other suitors when Dexter asks her to marry him. Both she…
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Hilda
The nurse who brings eleven-year-old Judy to the golf course the day she meets Dexter. She tries to enlist Dexter’s help to teach Judy how to play golf, though he has already been assigned…
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Minor Characters
Lud Simms –
A wealthy man from Detroit who is Judy’s husband and the father of her children. Simms is an alcoholic who spends periods away from home and runs around with other women. Despite his bad behavior, Devlin still believes that he is socially superior to Judy.
Mr. Sandwood
Mr. Hart
A member of the Sherry Island Golf Club. He joins Dexter, T.A. Hedrick, and Mr. Sandwood in a game of golf. After he loses a ball, the men go searching for it and encounter Judy after she hits a ball directly into Hedrick’s abdomen.
