Bello bello bello!
Una storia divertente, ironica, commovente e malinconica di personaggi veramente molto dettagliati anche nel loro carattere e nelle loro scelte. Nonostante i personaggi siano molti, si possono riconoscere quasi subito durante la lettura e si riconosce la loro identità precisa e chiara.
Mi ha tenuto compagnia, facendomi ridere e piangere. Un tesoro, stupendo!

2025

This is what it means to read the book at the right time. I am sitting here hugging the book, wishing it had never ended and happy I have the next part to start tomorrow after watching the movie of this book. The second time reading was quite an emotional rollercoaster - I cried and I laughed, I hoped and I fell in love with the book, the characters. Pure 5 stars.

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2021

Book buying and reading routine recipe (don't try it at home, dangerous for your financial situation. Besides, the huge pile might cause casual deaths, if administered without caution)

1. Complain that there is nothing to read, when the unread books bought during a year reach the ceiling if piled one on another.
2. Order about ten books.
3. Choose a book from the old pile.
4. Repeat the routine at your own pace.

This book survived only one new order and sat on my desk exactly 3 months yesterday!

When I first saw the book, I was sceptical about the cover, but the title hooked me (me! who thinks choosing unripened option vs red juicy tomatoes is crazy). Now I even love the cover.

I never understood what people were seeing in green tomatoes. Frankly speaking, I've never thought you could fry them. We only have those marinated with other vegetables. But my month was watering every time I took the book to continue.

Rare books manage to be a time machine, and this one nailed it! Somehow, even without the descriptions, I was living everything because of characters. For they were real, too real.

4.5 stars rounded down. I know this would be a pure five star, be I born about 10,000 km west, but I still loved the feeling of time travelling so far away from home.

Reading this book was like waking up on a spring morning after a long dreary winter to the sound of the dawn chorus, after a reading slump of a few weeks I really was delighted when this novel came up as a book club read, having read it in 2010 and loved the book I knew enough time had lapsed for me to forget the details of the story but not the wonderful characters.

Charming, witty thought proving and endering are all words that come to mind on finishing this novel. A lovely page turner to loose yourself in and characters that will stay with you long after you finish the novel

The day Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison opened the Whistle Stop Cafe, the town took a turn for the better. It was the Depression and that cafe was a home from home for many of us. You could get eggs, grits, bacon, ham, coffee and a smile for 25 cents. Ruth was just the sweetest girl you ever met. And Idgie? She was a character, all right. You never saw anyone so headstrong. But how anybody could have thought she murdered that man is beyond me. loved this book, had seen the film years ago and did not really think much of it, but the book really blew me away, for me it was the witt and the rich characters, Such an easy read full of tall tales and fun and yet sad in many parts. I really enjoyed this novel.

I loved the southern charm in this novel that weaves together the past and present through the friendship between Evelyn Crouch a middle aged housewife and Ninny Threadgoode and eatery woman who lives in a nursing home. I loved the references to food and receipes in the novel and came away really wanting to try some of them. Terrific character development makes this one a memorable read and I am so glad this is the book that gave me the five star read I was craving.

If you haven't read this one, purchase a copy and give yourself a treat.

Pensava al tempo lontano in cui il cielo era punteggiato da miriadi di stelle e tutti i fiumi e tutti i whisky gli erano sembrati dolci

Nostalgico e pervaso da un'infinita dolcezza, quello di Fannie Flagg è un romanzo che descrive lo scorrere inesorabile del tempo che non può tornare indietro, che mette a duro confronto la cruda realtà con un passato di ricordi e fantasmi, che lascia un senso di malinconia e un vuoto dove alla giovinezza si sostituisce silenziosamente la vecchiaia. Pomodori verdi fritti al caffè di Whistle Stop narra dei giorni che non potranno più tornare, e lo fa delicatamente, bussando piano alla porta della memoria.

This book is fluffy.
How fluffy?

It is as fluffy as floating on cloud while lying on a mattress stuffed with kittens and simultaneously wearing a pink angora jumper and a candy floss hat.

This is the sort of book I enjoy when my brain decides to take a day off. But it is lovely and it is likely that even the most po-faced cynics (me) will be drawn into the warm doughy bosom of this story of love, friendship and adversity in 1930s Alabama. The history of Whistlestop, along with helpful recipe appendices allowing the transposition British readers from the grim north to the Deep South, is relayed to the beleaguered Evelyn by old Mrs Threadgoode.

Aside from the odd murder, Whistle Stop is populated by a kind of chocolate-box perfection. It's a modest but model community with great food, the kindness of neighbours, life-long friendships. A kind of Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn wholesomeness oozes from between each page. Living in Toxteth I find it hard to imagine this kind of idealised community of hot-buttered-biscuit loveliness but it was nice to at least try until the piercing wail of a police siren broke the illusion.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg is a book I arrived at knowing little about, written by an author I know nothing about. So, it was a major surprise when I was blown out of the water by this experience.

The story involves a little railroad town in Alabama called Whistle Stop and centres around a Cafe of the same name operated by partners Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison. There’s a whole crew of characters we get to know, in fact, initially I found it difficult to keep track of who was who, but after a while I really got to know these people. They came alive for me, each one of them, the good, bad and the ugly.

The author jumps from the 1920s to the 1980s and back again and everywhere in between, the chapters are usually named after places such as the The Rose Terrace Nursing Home or after local bulletins like The Weems Weekly (Whistle Stop Alabama’s Weekly Bulletin),. The reader is taken backwards and forwards, from character to character and drama to drama – and one experiences every bump, laugh and tear – it is GOLD!!

My favourite character was Evelyn, this forlorn woman really grew on me. She is connected to the story by visiting her Mother-in-Law at the Rose Terrace Nursing Home and there she meets one of the old Threadgoode ladies. A wonderful relationship develops – but for me, it’s Evelyn’s journey that sparked my interest. Her relationship with old Ninny Threadgoode quickly blossomed into a wonderful thing:

When she woke this morning, Evelyn realised that she was actually looking forward to going to the nursing home. Sitting there all these weeks listening to stories about the café and Whistle Stop had become more of a reality than her own life…..

Ninny could talk underwater with a mouth full of marbles, this – as we all know – can be a little wearing, but it seemed to me this is exactly what Evelyn needed. It was a joy to see their friendship grow. The last section of this book was one of the most moving things I have read in recent times. I read it slowly.

Crazy, wayward, boozy Idgie was another fascinating character – her love for Ruth was absolute. Her path was no easier than Evelyn’s. But she was equally lovable. I would have liked to have sat down and had a pint of best bitter with Idgie, it’d be a riot:

The Dill Pickle Club……was really just a bunch of Idgie’s ragtag friends that would get together. About all they did was drink whiskey and make up lies (we call it Bullshit in Australia). They’d look you right in the eye and tell you a lie when the truth would have served them better

But Idgie had a MASSIVE heart – always looking out for the downtrodden. So kind-hearted, but a handful to be sure.

You could say this is a character piece but it’s much more than that – it also catapults us right back to a time and place most of us have never experienced. We are taken from the time Whistle Top was a buzzing little railroad town in the ‘20s to the sad days, decades after the railroads closed and the Town turned into a shadow of its former self.

It was also fascinating to learn more about ‘the other’ Birmingham. Birmingham is my hometown in the UK, we are called “Brummies”. The US version call themselves “Birminghamians”!! You know our Brummie accent in the UK is often voted the UK’s worst accent. I wonder if the Birminghamian accent suffers the same sad fate?

I’ve come away from this book with lots of questions - such as “what is Birmingham and Alabama like?” or “What do Fried Green Tomatoes taste like?” (BTW at the back of the book there are recipes), a great book sparks your interest in things I reckon. I’ve also collected a wonderful bunch of characters I will remember for a long time. Evelyn and Idgie in particular.

One word of caution though, this story isn’t all ‘Beer and Skittles’, there are certainly elements of racism, violence and domestic violence that come through – making this story all the more realistic.

5 Fried Green Tomatoes for me, with a side of Fried Okra and Lima Beans!

5 Stars

This book is a master class in writing a novel. First of all you have a solid story which takes you down the path and never wanders too far. Every element adds to the story, none of the side plots or extra details take anything away, they just keep adding to it. Secondly you have a cast of wonderful characters who are three dimensional and real. None of the characters feel unnecessary and they all add to the over all feeling of the book. There are two main stories in this book. One is of Evelyn Couch and Mrs Threadgoode in the 1980's. The other is of Idgie, Ruth, and Whistle Stop ranging from the 1920's all the way through to the present day of Evelyn and Mrs Threadgoode. Both stories are full of life, and love, and discovery. They are so immersive that you can't help but be sucked up into the world of the novel. There are twists and turns and fluffiness galore. How a book manages to be simultaneously serious, hard hitting, and fluffy, I have no idea but this book manages it. The book explores many themes. It tackles racism, the wars, feminism, morals, murder, self-discovery, and it serves them all up in a very tasty dish (pun intended). I was so emotionally invested in the characters that I cried several times throughout this book and that doesn't happen often when I read. I am eternally grateful that I was on the balcony of my hotel room when I read the last part of the book, where only my Mum was able to see me full on ugly crying, and not by the pool where all the other guests of the hotel would have thought I was crazy. This novel touched me and I have discovered a new favourite book along with new favourite characters and a new favourite couple (OTP alert!). I can not recommend this book highly enough. It's beautiful and charming and deserves every ounce of praise that it gets.

It’s odd, here the whole world was suffering so, but at the cafe, those Depression years come back to me now as the happy times, even though we were all struggling. We were happy and didn’t know it.

I finished the novel a few weeks back, but I delayed the review in order to hit the official start of the Holiday Season. Because this year 2020 has offered me enough grief already and I believe it’s important to put things in perspective and to realize that our best hope to get over the hard times is to put our faith in people, in our better nature and in our resilience in the face of adversity. Fannie Flagg’s collection of stories about a small impoverished community in rural Alabama at the time of the Great Depression serves exactly this purpose, never shying away from describing the worst kind of misfortune and despair visited on the people of Whistle Stop but always finding the moment of defiant laughter, the helping hand of a neighbour or the shoulder to cry on and share your burden.

He said, ‘Don’t you have anything better to do than to hang around that cafe all day?’
“I thought long and hard and said, ‘No, I don’t’ “

This is a long and meandering book, told in a random sequence of events that go back and forth in the timeline as an eighty year old woman in a nursing home, one of the last survivors of the Whistle Stop gang, recounts the events to a visiting lady, Evelyn Couch, a middle-aged housewife who herself struggles to make sense of a wasted life. Ninny Threadgoode was part of the extended family that is central to the story, but she is more a witness than an actor. The limelight is stolen right from the start by Idgie Threadgoode, a rebellious child who grows up to be an independent woman and the future patron of the Whistle Stop Cafe, the gathering place of family, friends, destitute people riding the Depression trains and of strangers looking for a good home cooked meal.

I believe poor people are good people, except the ones that are mean ... and they’d be mean even if they were rich.

Whistle Stop is just a small two-bit hamlet servicing the railway line, where everybody is struggling to make ends meet. The nearby slum for the colored people is even harder hit by the Recession, as is the nearby city of Birmingham, but Idgie and her partner Ruth manage to keep the cafe open and even to defy the social norms of the time, both in terms of sexual emancipation and by standing up to the Ku Klux Clan when they come knocking at their door. They even have time to organize into a social club nicknamed “The Dill Pickle Club” whose practical jokes and musical shows are the delight of the local paper run by neighbour Dot Weems : her short articles about current events and local gossip were always guaranteed to bring a smile to my face, even after yet another disaster struck the community.

I have no plan to describe in my review these day to day incidents of life at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Fannie Flagg and Dot Weems do a much better job than I ever could. S__t happens and you have to take the bad along with the good. As old Mrs. Ninny Threadgoode mentions earlier, being poor is not an excuse for acting like a pig or a bully, just as being rich is no guarantee of a good heart. What is important I believe is to belong, to know you can depend on the people around you and to be ready to give them the help they might need in times of trouble. This is what the cafe run by Idgie and Ruth represented, a port of refuge in the storm.

The quiet hysteria and awful despair had started when she finally began to realize that nothing was ever going to change, that nobody would be coming for her to take her away. She began to feel as if she were at the bottom of a well, screaming, no one to hear.

The reach of these stories, this sense of community that is for me so similar to the earlier work of Frank Capra, goes beyond their own geographical and historical limitations. In the novel, they are a beacon of hope and a solace for the troubled soul of Evelyn Couch, a casual visitor to the nursing home who comes back week after week to hear more stories of Whistle Stop from Ninny Threadgoode. Evelyn is painfully aware that being a ‘good girl’ who always did what she was told and always behaved properly lead her to a loveless marriage and a compulsive eating disorder. The selfishness and the rudeness of the younger generation are driving Evelyn even deeper into depression, but the way the elderly Mrs. Threadgoode still enjoys life in her final years and the stories about those irrepressible souls at the Whistle Stop Cafe might eventually save her, just as they did it for all those people who passed by the door of the famous cafe.

Those memories were still there, and tonight, he sat searching for them, just like always, grabbing at moonbeams. Every once in a while he would catch one and take a ride, and it was like magic. An old song played over and over in his head:
Smoke rings
Where do they go?
Those smoke rings I blow?
Those circles of blue, that
Keep reminding me of you ...

>>><<<>>><<<

This was my first book from Fannie Flagg, but it will not be my last. I have already ordered the sequel that was published this year, and I might even check out the movie adaptation. The last quote is from an interview with the author, included at the end of the novel, describing in a concise form the whole idea behind the book:

What is real life? I have come to believe that real life is what we want it to be. How we choose to look at life and interpret it. For me I choose to see it as I want it to be. Not that I do not see the terrible things; I do. But I find that if I hear on the news that ten people have been murdered and maybe twenty-five people hit in the head and robbed, I try to remember that on the same day there were millions of people who did not murder or rob anyone. I look for the best in people and I see it all the time.

Season’s Greetings, everyone!

Trigger warnings: Domestic abuse, alcoholism, murder, rape, racism, suicidal ideation

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Even though I'm quite disappointed in myself for not loving this book as much as everybody else seems to, I'm glad there were at least some parts of it I did enjoy. In between the heavy topics this book touches on, you'll find a fair few likeable characters, good family dynamics, and a cute and subtle romance.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café is about two women that meet at a nursing home: Mrs. Threadgoode, a chatty elderly lady, and Evelyn Couch, a miserable middle-aged woman. They strike up a (very unlikely) friendship, and Mrs. Threadgoode begins to tell Evelyn the life story of two other women who lived in Whistle Stop, Alabama in the early 1900's.

The two women — Idgie and Ruth — were one of the only elements of this book that kept me hooked until the end. Their whole relationship was so wholesome and they were the only two characters that really had some depth to them. Idgie is tomboyish and fiery, and her fits of rage make her all the more interesting, and Ruth is quiet and sweet and Idgie's polar opposite.

n  "Almost immediately, the parties started, and she tried to shut out any thoughts of Whistle Stop. But sometimes, in the middle of a crowd or alone at night, she never knew when it was going to happen, Idgie would suddenly come to mind, and she would want to see her so bad that the pain of longing for her sometimes took her breath away."n

Racism is a consistent theme in this novel, and some scenes revolving around it made me hold my breath: Clarissa and Artis' interaction, George's constant struggles ... The African American family that works for the Threadgoodes added a whole lot of dimension to the points Flagg was trying to make with this story. I liked that she made sure to underline that family is based on love, and not blood relation.

Sadly, I grew disinterested in half of the story as it progressed. There is a constant switch between narratives of characters, and just when you start to get to know one, you're stuck with a new chapter following some side character that doesn't add much to the storyline. I got a little sidetracked. I skipped a few of the Weems Weekly bulletin chapters and skimmed through a bunch of other pages.

n  She smiled at Evelyn. "That's what I'm living on now, honey, dreams, dreams of what I used to do."n

I didn't dislike this book as a whole, but I didn't really like it either. Parts were engaging, parts weren't. Still, hats off to Fannie Flagg for taking on the themes that are woven into this.

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Additional Notes:
- I had to read this book for school and I didn't hate with a passion, so that's a first

I feel bad saying it, but I think this is a case where I liked the movie better than I liked the book! The movie had its heartbreaking moments, but one was still left with quite a bit of humor and a general feeling of the significance of living life to the fullest. The book featured many more characters (and tragedies!) than the movie chose to portray, and the sadness of some of the stories dragged down the more humorous parts of the book. I guess I had expected the movie when I opened the pages... and that is always a dangerous thing! ;-)

The Year of Women--in which I'm devoting 2021 to reading female authors only--continues with Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg. Published in 1987, this was a substitution for the cozy mystery I had scheduled and it ended up featuring a bucolic setting, eccentric characters, delicious food and a murder trial. To an extent, there's even a dead body, but what impacted me about this novel where a cozy might not is Flagg's bittersweet chronicle of a town's passing, choked by the highway, stabbed in the heart when its remarkable residents pass on. As a lover of old things, Southern folklore and pathos, I loved this.

The story begins at the Rose Terrace Nursing Home in Birmingham in December 1985. Evelyn Couch has accompanied her husband to visit her mother-in-law, a recent and very unpleasant arrival at the facility. Evelyn escapes to the visitor's lounge, hoping to sneak a few of the candy bars she's grown to depend on. Out of nowhere, an eighty-six year old resident named Virginia Threadgoode begins telling Evelyn about the people or places of her past, the railroad town of Whistle Stop. During her weekly visits, Evelyn goes from humoring "Ninny's" stories to looking forward to them to not being able to live without them.

Most of Ninny's stories revolve around her sister-in-law Idgie Threadgoode, who like a wild animal, won't let people close, vanishing into the woods when life gets too much, or as an adult, down to the River Club and Fishing Camp to drink everyone under a table. Idgie is a teenager when she falls in love with a graduate of the Baptist Seminary named Ruth Jamison who comes to live with the Threadgoodes while supervising the BYO activities of the church for the summer. Sweet to the bone and beautiful, boys suddenly start attending Sunday service. Idgie drags Ruth out of bed one morning to share her secret ability to safely procure a jar of honey from a tree swarming with bees.

It's funny, most people can be around someone and then gradually begin to love them and never know exactly when it happened; but Ruth knew the very second it happened to her. When Idgie had grinned at her and tried to hand her that jar of honey, all these feelings that she had been trying to hold back came flooding through her, and it was at that second in time that she knew she loved Idgie with her heart. That's why she had been crying, that day. She had never felt that way before and she knew she probably would never feel that way again.

And now, a month later, it was because she loved her so much that she had to leave. Idgie was a sixteen-year-old kid with a crush and couldn't possibly understand what she was saying. She had no idea when she was begging Ruth to stay and live with them what she was asking; but Ruth realized, and she realized she had to get away.

She had no idea why she wanted to be with Idgie more than anybody else on this earth, but she did. She had prayed about it, she had cried about it; but there was no answer except to go back home and marry Frank Bennett, the young man she was engaged to marry, and to try to be a good wife and mother. Ruth was sure that no matter what Idgie said, she would get over her crush and get on with her life. Ruth was doing the only thing she could do.

Idgie spends the next three years checking in on Ruth in Georgia, getting sick drunk outside the church on Ruth's wedding day or watching her come and go from Sunday service. She even keeps a watch on Ruth's husband, dropping in every once in a while on a Wednesday when he visits the barbershop. One day, the woman who runs the drugstore lets it slip that Frank Bennett beats his wife. Idige storms into the barbershop and threatens to cut Frank's heart out if he hits Ruth again. Witnesses wonder what this boy had against Frank Bennett. Years later, after Frank Bennett disappears, they will recount the day in court.

With Idgie's help, Ruth escapes her marriage and returns to Whistle Stop. Idgie's father explains that she's responsible for Ruth and the baby she's carrying and gives her five hundred dollars to start a business. In 1929, the Whistle Stop Cafe opens. Idgie and Ruth run the place and live in a back room. They entrust the cooking to Sipsey Peavey, the colored woman who raised the Threadgoode children and is the best cook in the state. The man Sipsey adopted from the day he was abandoned on a train platform as a baby and named George Pullman Peavey butchers and barbecues the meat. Big George's wife Onzell helps in the kitchen as well.

Custom of the day prohibits Idgie from serving Black railroad workers or patrons from anywhere but the back of the cafe, but she never turns away a hungry soul. Word spreads on boxcars nationwide. The many acts of kindness Idgie shows over the course of her life are paid back when she goes on trial for the murder of Frank Bennett, who disappeared after following his wife to Whistle Stop. In 1986, Evelyn hangs onto every word, having grown closer to Ninny than anyone else in her life. Perhaps somewhere in the old woman's stories, she can locate where things started going wrong for her.

Things had changed so fast. While she had been raising the required two children--"a boy for him and a girl for me"--the world had become a different place, a place she didn't know at all.

She didn't get the jokes anymore. They all seemed so mean, and she was still shocked at the language. Here she was, at her age, and she'd never said the f word. So she mostly watched old movies and reruns of The Lucy Show. When the Vietnam War was going on, she'd believed what Ed had told her, that it was a good and necessary war, and that anyone against it was a communist. But then, much later, when she finally decided that it may not have been such a good war, Jane Fonda had already moved on to her exercise class and nobody cared what Evelyn thought, anyway. She still held a grudge against Jane Fonda and wished she'd get off TV and stop slinging her skinny legs around all the time.

Not that Evelyn hadn't tried along the way. She had tried to raise her son to be sensitive, but Ed had scared her so bad, telling her that he would turn out to be a queer, she had backed off and lost contact with him. Even now her son seemed like a stranger to her.

Both her children had passed her by. Her daughter, Janice, had known more about sex at fifteen than Evelyn did at this very minute. Something had gone wrong.

There were so many degrees available to Fannie Flagg to bake Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and she gets the temperature just right. It's neither a tragedy of race relations or two women raising a child in the Jim Crow South, nor a fantasy that ignores how oppressed people were. Like John Steinbeck, Flagg fills her stories with human beings who lust, drink, sneak out of windows, steal cars, tell lies, fight, kill, fall down, get up again and repeat until they shuffle off the earth. In that, I recognized life as I know it as opposed to something contrived. Chapters are short. Stories are in palatable servings, often from Whistle Stop's resident chronicler, Dot Weems at the post office.

Due to the encouragement of the Alabama Extension Service, a local pig club has been formed. Anyone wanting information is to call Mrs. Bertha Vick at home. Bertha said that a Miss Zula Hight of Kitrel, North Carolina, earned a pure-bred Registered China Pig in just seven days, and Bertha said you could do the same thing if you just put your mind to it. She said to own a pure-bred pig is a mark of distinction for you and your community and will start you on the road to prosperity. It will mean the laying of a foundation for a comfortable income for you all of your life, and when old age overtakes you.

Idgie just got her brand-new Philco radio at the cafe, and says anybody wanting to hear "Amos 'n' Andy," or any other program, is welcome to come in and need not order anything to eat. She says the sound is good at night especially.

By the way, does anybody know how to get rid of dog tracks in cement? If so, call me up or come by the post office and tell me.

The novel provided the source material for a feature film released as Fried Green Tomatoes in 1991. Adapted by Fannie Flagg and Carol Sobieski and directed by Jon Avnet, I recall that the film downplayed the romance between Idgie and Ruth but was entertaining and had some outstanding performances in it: Mary Stuart Masterson as Idgie, Mary-Louise Parker as Ruth, Jessica Tandy as Ninny and Kathy Bates as Evelyn. Bates is a standout. No two characters she played in the 1990s were alike. I had forgotten she was Molly Brown in Titanic and Adam Sandler's mom in The Waterboy too. I mean, Kathy Bates could do anything.

Fannie Flagg was born Patricia Neal in Birmingham, Alabama in 1944 and grew up in the nearby railroad town of Irondale. She changed her name to Frances Carlton Flagg at age 17 when she applied for the Actor's Equity (there was already a Patricia Neal doing well in theater and film). She currently resides in Montecito, California



In the event you missed them: Previous reviews in the Year of Women:

Come Closer, Sara Gran
Veronica, Mary Gaitskill
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, Viv Albertine
Pizza Girl, Jean Kyoung Frazier
My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh

Sigurno ste vi gledali film, tamo negdje u devetesetima.. I ja sam, naravno ( i jako mi se svidio), ali nisam, sve do sada, čitala knjigu.. A, ako je film tako dobar onda i knjiga mora biti genijalna što je i ovdje slučaj... I u filmu i u knjizi osjećamo emocije s kojima je Fanni Flag ispričala priču o gradiću Whistle Stop i njegovim stanovnicima.. Bilo je to doba velike ekonomske krize '30.-ih god. prošlog stoljeća u doba kada su crnci u Americi sjedili u stražnjem djelu autobusa, a bijelci se prekrivali plahtama i nazivali Ku Klux Klan-om. Usprkos tim teškim vremenima, osebujni likovi ove priče hrabro idu kroz taj težak život uz puno ljubavi, poštovanja, ponosa, a i humora čak i onda kada je najteže. Iako se radnja odvija na američkom jugu prošlog stoljeća, mnoge situacije opisane u knjizi su svevremenske jer za ljubav, hrabrost, plemenitost, lojalnost, pravo prijateljstvo nisu važni vrijeme ni prostor kao ni boja kože. Ima priča kojima se uvijek rado vraćamo, a ovo je, barem za mene, jedna od njih.