This book uses all the problematic language of the era in which it's placed without actually reading like it's in the voice of that time. I could get past phrases like, "Her Chinese stood in the corner," if I felt like the book was written from the perspective of someone in that time period, but Messinger doesn't put enough effort into selling it. With the exception of some antiquated words and phrases that required googling, the narrative wouldn't have read all that differently if the story took place in 2016. On top of all that, I found the story hard to follow -- which, I'll admit, may be just because I was so distracted by the writing style. I wanted to be interested in finding out, for example, why a whole family slaughtered each other, but meh. It was a tough slog.