The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Runion - Fanny Flag

Genre:  Contemporary Fiction; Historical Fiction

Pages:  347 pages

Publishing Date:  November 5, 2013

Rating:  3 out of 5 stars on Goodreads


Goodreads Summary:
Mrs. Sookie Poole of Point Clear, Alabama, has just married off the last of her daughters and is looking forward to relaxing and perhaps traveling with her husband, Earle. The only thing left to contend with is her mother, the formidable Lenore Simmons Krackenberry. Lenore may be a lot of fun for other people, but is, for the most part, an overbearing presence for her daughter. Then one day, quite by accident, Sookie discovers a secret about her mother's past that knocks her for a loop and suddenly calls into question everything she ever thought she knew about herself, her family, and her future.
Sookie begins a search for answers that takes her to California, the Midwest, and back in time, to the 1940s, when an irrepressible woman named Fritzi takes on the job of running her family's filling station. Soon truck drivers are changing their routes to fill up at the All-Girl Filling Station. Then, Fritzi sees an opportunity for an even more groundbreaking adventure. As Sookie learns about the adventures of the girls at the All-Girl Filling Station, she finds herself with new inspiration for her own life.

My Thoughts:

This is a hard book for me to decide on a star rating.  For the first portion of the book, I was thinking one, maybe one and a half, stars.  I just was having a hard time getting into the narrative, seeing the connections, and being invested in the characters.  Especially Sookie, she just annoyed me.  The filling station doesn’t even show up until you’re quite a bit into the novel…much less the “all-girl” part.

But I am glad I stuck with it.  Around the middle the story really picked up.  Plus, I started seeing character growth/change in Sookie that made her character more relatable. 

The narrative jumps back and forth between contemporary and history.  I will say the history storyline was far more intriguing to me.  It has sparked some additional reading that I want to do around that time period on topics that were introduced. 

So I would say, the novel taken as a whole, is probably a solid 3.  I liked it.