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Grandma-over-in-town is Faye’s mother, a traditional but non-extremist Mormon. Grandma-over-in-town wanted Faye to marry into a family with a higher social standing to secure a better life for her children and grandchildren, and she is disappointed when Faye rebels by marrying Gene. Although Grandma-over-in-town ultimately supports her daughter’s choice, the two drift further and further apart as Faye becomes increasingly entrenched in Gene’s extremist beliefs. Due to their strained relationship, Tara doesn’t know her grandmother well. As a child, she imagines her as a cold, boring, fancy socialite and is glad her mother escaped that world. However, Grandma-over-in-town does gift Tara her first journal, which becomes an incredibly important and ever-present part of her personal and educational journey.
In adulthood, when Tara is no longer on speaking terms with her father, she returns home for Grandma-over-in-town’s funeral. There, she reconnects with her mother’s sister, Aunt Angie, as she too has had a falling out with Gene and Faye. Through Angie, Tara is also able to reconnect with other members of her maternal family that Gene and Faye had always held at arm's length. She learns from them that Grandma-over-in-town was nothing like the distant, humorless person that she had once imagined, and that she had been given an unfair account of her grandmother through the biased lens of her radicalized parents. Tara reflects on the loss of what could have been a wonderful relationship with her grandmother, and wonders whether Grandma-over-in-town may have been one of the few people in her life who would have understood Tara’s own feelings about Faye, since both Tara and her grandmother lost Faye to fundamentalism.
