Ellis Birch

Ellis Birch is a resident of Pokenberry Falls, a faded New England town, and dean of its First Church. He is a homespun figure who wears fishing lures on his hat and flies a rattling old Cessna. When the struggling church needed a preacher, he traveled to Odyssey to recruit George Barclay, then freshly graduated from seminary. His postcards presented Pokenberry Falls as a gleaming resort town with a grand hotel, a college, and a fine stone church. The town he actually showed the Barclays had boarded-up stores, empty streets, and a famous waterfall reduced to a pipe dribbling into a concrete basin. Even so, the family accepted the call. Ellis is also the grandfather of Amy Birch, an orphaned girl who resents the town he promotes so eagerly.