Point of View

This novel is told from the point of view of an omniscient narrator. About half of the story is told with a focus on Andy while the other half focuses on Andy’s mother, Laura. There is one chapter, Chapter 7, that is told with a focus on Laura Juneau, the woman who shoots Martin and then herself. The narrator shares the women’s thoughts, emotions, and memories as their stories are told. The entire novel, both the parts of the novel — the ones about Andy told in the “present” and the parts about Laura from the 1986 — are narrated in past tense.

The focus on two different adult women living in two very different periods of time gives the reader some perspective on how life changed from 1986 to 2018. For example, in 1986, AIDS was a relatively new disease with doctors and nurses in rural hospitals still fearful...