Fanny Flag's most well known novel is a celebration of memory. Through unveiling its time spanning romantic tapestry by winding in-between the remembering of the present, the truth of the past . This is a historical romance novel but it's also so much more,filled with characters experiencing constant changes it also reads like a collection of coming of age arcs. Where through the contrasting of the past and future give you an unprecedented experience of life and death in that character who'd only been 12 in one chapter would be much old in another. A dizzying technique best used by Vonnegut but still effectively utilized by Flagg as a means to cull the most emotionally from the book.

Just like it's wholesome film adaptation which I had seen first, the book has a well established sense of place. The community of whistleStop is rich with context, lore and history. Newspaper articles from local papers preced chapters either reporting on local rumor, phenomenon, tragedy or news . I had firts found it jarring as it didn't always have to do with the chaper before it and the mentions of the authors relationship with her chaotic husband ("other half "). It gives you this information as if you had been a citizen