A wonderful book with an honest voice. This book will turn your emotions with each page. One page you are weeping with Janie (the protagonist) over her lonely and isolated marrige to Logan, the next page you will laugh like a crazy person as she clumsily flirts with Jody Starks. This book is one of the sweetest song to come out of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston uses her hometown of Eatonville as the stage for Janie's coming into her self story. I can't call it a coming of age because it's not an appropriate term, she isn't magically smarter at any age, but rather comes to understand herself as she travels and meets others. Janie dutifully lives the life her grandmother handpicked for her until the elderly woman's death. At this point Janie leaves the world of disappointment and journeys with Jody Sparks to Florida to start an all African American town. There Hurston's voice comes through as narrator, and folklorist. Her work collecting folklore appears as little beautiful stories which make the characters all the more compelling and heartbreaking. One of the best books of American Literature and an excellent read for students going to college.