The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

★★★★

GENRE: Fiction
SUBJECT: Female Flyers WWII, adoption
Setting: Point Clear, AL,  Pulaski, WI
CHARACTERS: Sookie Poole, Earle Poole Jr., Lenore Simmons Krackenberry, Netta Verp, Fritzi Jurdabralinski, Sophie Marie Jurdabralinski, Billy Bevins, Dr. Shapiro
DATE READ: January 15 - January 23
NO. OF PAGES: 419
Challenges: TIOLI, CATEGORY, GEOCAT,US
SOURCE: ARC from author for review

PLOT:...............................................4.50
CHARACTERIZATION:..................4.00
TOPICS:..........................................4.00
STYLE:............................................4.00
ORIGINALITY:.................................4.00
ADDICTIVENESS:.........................4.00
OWNERSHIP:.................................3.50
Threshold Quality............................4.00
Average.........................................................4.00


Did you ever think as you were growing up that maybe you were adopted and that's why you just didn't seem to fit in?  Well, Sookie Poole never seemed to live up to her mother's expectations, but when at age 60 she received a package that told her she was adopted, Sookie was stunned.  She tried psychiatric consultations (but she didn't want her mother to know that she knew - so the doctor met her at the Waffle House) and she started researching her birth mother's family and origins.  Sookie, an Alabaman southern Baptist, found her birth mother was a Wisconsian Polish Catholic.

Now glide back in time to Pulaski Wisconsin and meet the Jurdabralinski family.  Stanislav owns the Phillips 66 station and when sickness forces him to recuperate out of state, his 4 daughters, wife and daughter-in-law take on running the station and pretty girls brought a bunch business until WWII and gas rationing force a shutdown. 

The oldest Daughter, Fritzi, already had her flying license, and had taught 2 of her sisters so with the station shutdown, Fritzi, Gertrude and Sophie Marie  join the WASPs to help ferry new aircraft from the factory to the airfields for the war effort.

Back to Sookie, she garners enough courage to call the name on her birth certificate and arranges to meet.

The story easily floats back and forth between Sookie and her Mother (Lenore is a bit wacky and easily makes the reader sympathize with Sookie) and the Jurdabralinski girls.  The short chapters make the story whip along and help to hold the readers interest.

Surprise ending with heart and laughter included