Your review of this book is much kinder and gentler than mine would be (had I written one).
Now I'm tempted to write one!
I can attest to the lonely life of a farmwife (even though she has a husband and children who are busy doing things) - born and raised on a farm, I thought even small-town folk had a much more socially and culturally rich lifestyle than we did.
But Francesca's torrid one-week love affair with a traveling photographer...
The frame story, the repeated line about his truck (like the refrain of a ballad) -
You could tell he was a songwriter.
In college, when he was still just a business professor, my sister worked for him, and we'd go see his little folk band play on The Hill. (My lit professor and his wife were also in the band.) Waller lived at 3011 Winter Ridge Road in Cedar Falls while he was a business professor and dean of the business department.

Waller and Cawelti performed songs from 1980 to 1986 around Iowa with their former band “Winter Ridge Handy”. One of the songs, “North Dakota Transfer”, directly echoes both the plot and character of Waller’s blockbuster novel, “Bridges of Madison County”. This song having been written at least a decade before “Bridges” ...
https://webstercity.com/event/robert-james-wallers-songs-poetry-an-appreciation/

Funny, I cannot find their music online. Somewhere, I still have a 1980s cassette tape, and I still remember "Little Birdie", 'Charlie is my darling" (the young chevalier) and "Oh Death," but not the other songs (not offhand).