Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns: Will Tweedy was 14 years old and living in Cold Sassy, Georgia, in the summer of 1906 when his grandpa came home one day to announce he was marrying a woman half his age, not three weeks after the death of his first wife, Will’s grandmother. The town, of course, is scandalized, and continues to be so as the story wears on. This is more of a “slice of life” depiction than much of a story – the author starts with a setting (the town of Cold Sassy) and a premise (Grandpa’s new bride), and meanders through clever little anecdotes and asides for a while until the author decides it’s time to end the story and starts killing off characters. This is not a bad story, just a fairly standard one. I don’t have very strong feelings about it either way. The constant backcountry dialect got kind of old, but I feel that way about all books narrated in dialect so that’s not exactly serious criticism. On the other hand, I could hear all the characters in my head with no problem. In the end, if you like this era of historical fiction, you’ll enjoy the feeling of living in Cold Sassy; if you prefer more plot-driven stories where everything happens for a reason, you might want to skip this one.

Also posted on BookCrossing.