This book is just wonderful. Hurston’s writing is beautiful, the way she tells of and describes feelings and people and communities is moving and astute, every word perfectly chosen and placed. Janie is a magnificent character, she felt so completely real and entirely sympathetic. Her journey into self discovery and freedom was heart breaking and powerful and I will not forget it.

The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul. She was a rut in the road. Plenty of life beneath the surface but it was kept beaten down by the wheels. Sometimes she stuck out in the future, imagining her life different from what it was. But mostly she lived between her hat and her heels, with her emotional disturbances like shade patterns in the woods - come and gone with the sun.