Point of View

There are two distinct points of view in this novel. The prologue and epilogue are written in the first person point of view. The narrator of these parts of the novel is Nora Rolvaag, Patty Jane's daughter. In the prologue, Nora is just a teenager, watching her beautiful mother flirt with some stranger in a drug store. Nora discusses her mother in detail, including her beauty and her morals when she turns the guy down for being married. Nora also introduces her unusual family in this prologue, a family that consists of an absent father, a maternal aunt, and her paternal grandmother. In the epilogue, the first person narration is again Nora Rolvaag. However, this Nora is much older. Nora is now a woman in her forties, an accomplished attorney who has recently returned to her hometown to be near her family. The bulk of the...