Chili handles it all, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes gracefully, but at all times with a sincerity befitting to her character and her determination. Problems rise and fall among the tales, some addressed, some left in a state of conflict, from Chili's changing relationship with her two best childhood friends to the changing dynamics within her home and hometown.
Set in the mid-'70s, Fawcett's novel offers a series of Chili's reflections, each self-contained (most are a page or two long) and each contributing in different ways to the overall themes of the novel. Twelve-year-old Chileda (Chili) Sue Mahoney is having an eventful life: there's the arrival of her seventy-year-old Uncle Lu, the return of her pregnant older sister, a burgeoning friendship with welfare kid Willie Bright, and the coming of Miss Matlock, an elderly substitute teacher who left Chili's hometown of Mercy Hill, Kentucky to see the world, just as Chili dreams of doing, but who has a mysterious history.
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