Johnnie Pelham

In the novel Absent in the Spring, Johnnie Pelham is a man who Blanche Haggard fell in love with--another one in a long line of ex-lovers and husbands. Blanche left her husband and her two children, to be with him. Blanche thought that having children would steady a person down, and indeed she did love her two children very much. Yet, as she told her old acquaintance Joan Scudamore, when she met Johnnie Pelham, she left her husband and children without a second thought. Not that her relationship with him lasted long, but "it was a good time while it lasted."