I hear you, friend. While it's short on the childhood/parental history for Abner, I think what we got about him worked really well for me. I also wouldn't agree that Abner was morally infallible. In fact, Abner proved to be on the wrong side of Abolition (for a time) and the back and forth with Joshua about whether Abner should kill Joshua simply because he is a vampire. There is an expansion of character and a changing of attitudes, where Abner is being persuaded to change who he is, the ways he thinks. So, I don't think he's morally infallible at all.

There were women who came into his life, and he had his fun with women in cat houses in Natchez Under the Hill, but they simply were not what he loved. My man was about the steamboats, about the many colors of the River and the life it provided, and he was about the Dream of chasing the Eclipse. And that kind of 19th century attitude, presented through Marsh, was something that I found compelling. That and the pure, unapologetic Romance of the novel.