Point of View

The novel is written from both the first and third person points of view. The chapters titled with Miriam’s, August’s, and Hazel’s first names are written from the third person point of view. In these chapters, the third person narration is limited to each respective character’s perspective. This means that in a chapter like Chapter 2, “Miriam, 1995,” Miriam’s name at the start of the chapter indicates that the narrator will be tracing her perspective throughout the enclosed pages. By way of example, this chapter begins with the lines, “Blue mist clung to the mountains like a lace shawl. She’d figured they’d be gray—the Smokies. The blue of everything astounded her” (13). Although Miriam’s first person perspective is not guiding the narration, the third person narrator inhabits her consciousness and describes the world through her lens. The same is...