Who is Mya in Elephant Run?

Mya is Nick's friend on the Burmese plantation. Her ambition is to become a Mahout, an elephant handler like her father, but unfortunately women are forbidden from working in the profession. She gets some satisfaction by helping to look after the female elephant Miss Pretty. Elephant handlers are supposed to look after their elephant from its infancy, and though Mya says Miss Pretty is three times older than her, they have such a connection that Mya feels like she has known Miss Pretty since she was a calf.
Along with Nick and the Buddhist monk Taung Baw, Mya escapes the plantation, where they have become slaves to the Japanese, to save Nick's father. Taking an elephant called Hannibal, they trek through the jungles and villages of Japanese occupied Burma.
After the war, Nick and Mya become a couple.

Elephant Run is a young adult book by Roland Smith. Elephant Run takes place on a teak plantation in Burma during World War II and follows a fourteen-year-old boy named Nicholas Freestone and Mya, the daughter of the plantation's foreman. After the Japanese invade Burma, the Freestone plantation is overtaken, and Nicholas's father, Jackson Theodore Freestone III, is taken as a POW.
Mya is a talented elephant trainer in Burma but is unable to be an elephant rider, a mahout. Mahout in Burma are strictly male. Mahout are paired with a young elephant that will grow up with the mahout and create a bond between the two that will last their entire lives. Mya is defiant, a trait that shows strongly in her fight to become a mahout. Her caring, loving nature is shown by her love and gentleness while raising Miss Pretty, her elephant. She is held captive, along with Nick, by the Japanese and works as a housemaid. Mya is helpful to Nick in his search for his father.