"It's first the story of two women in the 1980's, a gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth, who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, A Southern kind of cafe Wobegone offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder." --- Book Jacket