The Shepard Family is a fictitious family in several of the novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

s of S.E. Hinton (see Continuity within S.E. Hinton Novels

Continuity within S.E. Hinton Novels

The young adult novels of bestselling author S.E. Hinton -- The Outsiders , That Was Then, This Is Now , Rumble Fish , Tex and Taming the Star Runner -- all contain a number of common threads in locations, characters and themes...

.) The family consists of a mother and stepfather (mentioned in That Was Then, This Is Now

That Was Then, This Is Now

That Was Then, This Is Now is a coming-of-age young adult novel by S. E. Hinton. It follows the relationship between two brothers who find their relationship rapidly changing. It was later made into a film starring Emilio Estevez.- Plot :...

), sons Tim and Curly (mentioned in The Outsiders

The Outsiders (novel)

The Outsiders is a coming-of-age novel based in 1965 by S. E. Hinton, first published in 1967 by Viking Press. Hinton was 15 when she started writing the novel, but did most of the work when she was sixteen and a junior in high school. Hinton was 18 when the book was published...

) and daughter Angela (first mentioned in That Was Then, This Is Now

That Was Then, This Is Now

That Was Then, This Is Now is a coming-of-age young adult novel by S. E. Hinton. It follows the relationship between two brothers who find their relationship rapidly changing. It was later made into a film starring Emilio Estevez.- Plot :...

). The family is working class and lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Oklahoma

Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

. They are notable as a dysfunctional family

Dysfunctional family

A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior, and often abuse on the part of individual members occur continually and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such actions. Children sometimes grow up in such families with the understanding that such an arrangement is...

, and visitors to their house notice that the parents are always yelling, cursing and throwing stuff at each other and at their children, and that the children would join in as well. Despite this, the family protects its own and the older brothers are noticeably protective of their sister.

Tim Shepard

Tim Shepard is likely the most notable character of the family because he is mentioned far more than his siblings throughout The Outsiders and That Was Then, This is Now. Tim is the leader of The Shepard Gang, one of the few gangs mentioned in The Outsiders. He is eighteen years old at the time of The Outsiders and the oldest Shepard sibling. Tim is described as lean and cat-like. Ponyboy also mentions that Tim has curly, black hair and smoldering blue eyes. He has broken his nose three times, the third time being at the famous rumble near the end of The Outsiders and has a scar running from his temple to his chin from being slashed by a tramp(homeless man) with a broken pop bottle. He is noticeably absent from Rumble Fish, indicating that a significant amount of time has passed between the events of The Outsiders and That Was Then, This is Now.

Curly Shepard

Curly Shepard is in the reformatory for an attempted robbery on a liquor store during the events of "The Outsiders" but appears a couple of times in "That Was Then, This is Now". His inability to control his impulses land him in trouble on occasion and he is described as a dumb hood by both the protagonists from "The Outsiders" and "That Was Then, This Is Now."

Angela Shepard

Angela Shepard is original to "That Was Then, This Is Now" and is portrayed as a very tough, character. She dated Bryon but left him to go after Ponyboy Curtis who rejected her advances. She is described as very beautiful. Angela has long, black-blue ringlets that run down to her waist. Bryon Douglas says that Angela, "Angel" for short, was so beautiful she could be a movie star as well as a party girl. Her hair is cut short by Mark and Bryon when she drunkenly lets them take her somewhere and passes out, and she was married by the end of the book because she thought she was pregnant, though it turned out that she was not. Her marriage does not seem to be going well, as while Angela was drunk, she complained about her husband and in-laws to Bryon and Mark. Angela tells the boys that her father-in-law comes on to her. At the end of the novel, Angela seems almost frightened by the change in Bryon.