Point of View

The novel is narrated in the first person and the present tense by three alternating narrators, sisters Althea, Viola, and Lillian Butler. Althea is narrating from jail, as she has recently been convicted of fraud, while Viola and Lillian are attempting to take care of Althea's twin teenage daughters and cope with their own past traumas at the same time. The three distinct narrations build on one another as the sisters are plunged deep into their memories, as being in close proximity with family causes old issues to resurface.

These issues are explored through richly descriptive flashbacks of family dynamics and dysfunction that explain how the sisters came to be in their present situations. Althea recalls meeting her husband Proctor at her mother's funeral when she was 12, and how he had consoled her. This provides an explanation for how, and more importantly why, the two...