When a book opens with a quote from the movie Thelma & Louise, it sets a high expectation for the action that follows on the next pages. The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise meets and exceeds this expectation. Delightfully so.

The story begins simply enough: 84-year-old widow Louise Wilt is recovering from hip surgery. None of her children live nearby. One of them hires a housemate to move in and to help Louise with errands and appointments ... and 21-year-old Tanner Quimby has nothing else to do anyway. She is only busy brooding over the loss of her college athletic scholarship after suffering an injury of her own.

Both women quickly have doubts about living within this arrangement. They come from different eras, if not entirely different worlds. The best they can do at first is to be somewhat polite to one another. Somewhat. While each silently judges the other party behind her back.

But it turns out that Louise has a secret past that has returned to her life. She wants to get to California from Georgia ASAP, and she doesn't fly. Tanner has turned out to be a competent driver so far. You guessed it: Road Trip! With no cellphones, and without either woman telling their families where they are going. Road Trip! Even though Louise doesn't think that Tanner drives fast enough. And even though law-abiding Tanner already believes that she's suddenly found herself on the lam with a thief and a criminal.

As the miles pass, Tanner and Louise share a few more tidbits about their backgrounds, in dribs and drabs. Some details, we may anticipate. Many are surprises. This is the way we learn about one another in real life. We don't get full stories, all at once. We get snippets through conversations and asides, as we go. Sitting in a car together for a few thousand miles is the perfect chance to collect and re-assemble these puzzle pieces. Maybe these two women from opposite ends of the life scale have some ideas and feelings in common. Maybe they have lessons to learn from one another. Maybe they just need to deal with the here and now, and figure out how to get to California.

The narrative is told in third-person limited, alternating most of the focus from Louise, to Tanner, and back to Louise. Additional insights switch the action to folks who are searching for the two women. The leading question is: Will Tanner help Louise reach her goal? And if she does: then, what?

The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise was such a compelling read for me that I read it all in one marvelous day. Thanks, Colleen Oakley, for giving us interesting characters to care about, and for giving them challenging circumstances to meet and to overcome. I recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys a good story about strong women (who don't necessarily recognize their strengths), and especially to those of us who fit into the age range between Tanner (21) and Louise (84). We can understand the cultural references from both sides.