Fair Weather is built around a structural and linguistic juxtaposition of town and country, making this the novel’s central theme. The novel explores the pros and cons of each lifestyle as part of the coming-of-age narrative, especially to illustrate the young characters’ navigation of incipient adulthood, moral and social judgments, and the changes of time in history.

The novel’s first four chapters, set on and around the Beckett farm, show both the limitations and the benefits of country life. On the one hand, everyone in the family, even Granddad and seven-year-old Buster, pulls together to keep the farm going. Though Rosie, writing from an undisclosed point in the future, knows the family was poor, she adds, “Poor but proud” (1). On the other hand, the children have never taken a train ride or traveled far from home, and high school only lasts for two years. They speak in quaint country sayings, often using colorful similes, as when Buster “ooze[s] away like a barn cat” (9). Strong-willed Lottie has managed to grow up and come into her own in this setting. Rosie, who is spunky when she is on her home turf and timid away from home, is far less assured.