Where It All Goes Down
Sylvan, South Carolina and Tiburon, South Carolina
In describing her hometown of Sylvan, South Carolina, Lily keeps it brief:
. . . population 3,100. Peach stands and Baptist churches, that sums it up. (1.49)
So, not exactly a spring break destination, we guess?
Apparently, the nearby town of Tiburon, to which Lily and Rosaleen flee early in the novel, is not "buzzing," either (sorry, we couldn't resist):
Tiburon was a place like Sylvan, minus the peaches. In front of the domed courthouse someone had stuck a Confederate flag in the mouth of their public cannon. South Carolina was Dixie first, America second. You could not get the pride of Fort Sumter out of us if you tried. (3.77)
Lily's description of setting here provides additional evidence that the legacies of the Civil War and the Confederacy loom large, which we already know from the early references to racial tension and segregation.
Her references to Southern pride aside, Lily doesn't paint the most razzle dazzle picture of these South Carolina towns. However, the picture gets a bit brighter—literally—when she gets to August's house, a.k.a. "the pink house." She gets her first glimpses of August and the pink house at the same moment:
The woman moved along a row of white boxes that bordered the woods beside the pink house, a house so pink it remained a scorched shock on the back of my eyelids after I looked away. (4.1)
Unsurprisingly, with her entry into this new, "brighter" setting, life in general gets brighter and sunnier as well (and don't worry, her retinas are fine).