Content Warning: This novel contains descriptions of drug abuse.

Bernard is one of the novel’s four main characters, including his adoptive sons, Teddy and Tip, in addition to Kenya Moser, whom he adopts at the end of the novel. Bernard is a white, 63-year-old, former mayor of Boston; he has served on the Boston City Council, worked as a prosecutor, and during the novel’s main action, he works at a law firm nearby his large home on Union Park Street. His wife, Bernadette, died of cancer during the early 1990s and Bernard never remarried. Instead, according to Ann Patchett’s narrator: “Mr. Doyle filled [the place where Bernadette had been] by giving [his sons] twice as much of himself” (212). This, however, has had the result of his sons having little Awareness of Privilege.

Doyle is a conscientious and confident character, but his difficulties with honesty have harmed him in the past. For example, 10 years ago, his career as mayor ended when he lied to the media about a scandal involving his eldest son, Sullivan. Patchett makes it ambiguous whether Doyle learns from this event because, though he does not try to return to work in politics, he stays involved in that world through his sons.