The Setting of the Sun : Syntax and Style : 9780615604619 : 0615604617 : 07 Dec 2012 : The Setting of the Sun takes place in a single day, as Anne (who is 95 years old) attends the wake, funeral and burial of her husband, her one true love, Tom. With tenderness, her daughter Maggie helps Anne with her confusion and sadness as her mind drifts between the past and present. Throughout the day, events elicit in Anne's mind memories of her childhood and her life with Tom in the mill city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and she relives wonderful moments of her sisterly love with her best friend, Annie. Meanwhile, Maggie grieves for her father while realizing that her mother, too, will soon pass on. After a family gathering, Anne returns home to face life without Tom. Allusions to a poem Anne wrote to Tom years earlier are sprinkled throughout the story. At the end of the novel is the poem - titled "The Setting of the Sun" - in which Anne expresses with simple eloquence the essence of true love -