Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

by Fannie Flagg

It's first the story of two women in the 1980s, of 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 life partner Ruth, who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder.
(Summary retrieved from goodreads.com)

I can't sing the praises of this book enough. It is heartbreaking and hilarious at the same time, which mirrors the dual nature of segregated life in the US. 

My absolutely favorite quotation, from Idgie of course: “Oh it don't make no kind of sense. Big ol' ox like Grady won't sit next to a colored child. But he eats eggs- shoot right outta chicken's ass!”