I found the third-to-last and second-to-last stories to be an annoyance (the one about the two young sisters whose mother tried to shoot her daughter's boyfriend and the one about the disturbed young preacher's daughter). These were two very depressing short stories that really had nothing to do with Olive (with just the barest of references to brief comments she had made to characters in these stories as a teacher, years before). I'm wondering, did the publisher tell the author she needed to add another hundred or so pages to the book?

I don't remember the last time while reading a book I interrupted my wife so many times to read her an exceptional phrase, sentence or paragraph. This book has rekindled my ultimate faith in the potential of human nature for good.