Point of View

The author writes the novel from the third and first person points of view of Gloria Ramírez, Corrine Shepard, Mary Rose Whitehead, Debra Ann Pierce, Ginny Pierce, Suzanne Ledbetter, and Karla Stibley. Only those sections titled with Mary Rose's name are written from the first person point of view. The narrator adopts a close third person vantage in the shaping of the other women's stories. This decision grants Mary Rose's character a different sense of agency and authority over her own narrative. Her ability to claim and tell her own story in her own voice, illustrates her determination not to disappear into a litany of invisible Odessa women. While the other female protagonists are also fiercely courageous and resilient, they must work harder to identify their true identities, to rediscover who they are and want to be.

The close third person perspective illustrates this...