Sara Will is set in Tyler Mills, a small, agrarian community in the western mountains of North Carolina. The small town setting is important to the development of the novel because it is in the rural community that the characters find refuge. The novel begins in the autumn, and as the seasons change, so do the characters. They endure a harsh winter but find a renewed sense of living in the spring. The immediate story occurs in the 1980s, but flashbacks into Sara's past cover a twenty-year period.