Summary

Pages 1 - 39

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café is composed like a scrapbook, with many short chapters that jump across space and time, newspaper articles, and local newsletters. The story is told both in present tense, from the 1920’s – 1940’s, when the events occurred, and in past tense, when Ninny Threadgoode relives events by retelling them to her friend, Evelyn Crouch, in the 1980’s. These chapters are interspersed with Weekly newsletters from Dot Weems (Whistle Stop, 1929 – 1969) and a variety of other short news clippings. Together, these short pieces work as a collage to create a vibrant image of the way that Whistle Stop, Alabama has changed over the years.

In the first section of the novel, Dot Weems, the local post woman who writes a weekly newsletter to fill the inhabitants of Whistle Stop in on all the town’s gossip...