Read Fannie Flagg in Large Print

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! is the funny, serious, and compelling new novel by Fannie Flagg, author of the beloved Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (and prize-winning co-writer of the classic movie).

Once again, Flagg's humor and respect and affection for her characters shine forth. Many inhabit small-town or suburban America. But this time, her heroine is urban: a brainy, beautiful, and ambitious rising star of 1970s television. Dena Nordstrom, pride of the network, is a woman whose future is full of promise, her present rich with complications, and her past marked by mystery.

Among the colorful cast of characters are:

   Sookie, of Selma, Alabama, Dena's exuberant  college roommate, who is everything that Dena  is not; she is thrilled by Dena's success and will  do everything short of signing autographs for  her; Sookie's a mom, a wife, and a Kappa forever

        

    Dena's cousins, the Warrens, and her aunt Elner,  of Elmwood Springs, Missouri, endearing, loyal,  talkative, ditsy, and, in their way, wise

        

    Neighbor Dorothy, whose spirit hovers over them  all through the radio show that she broadcast  from her home in the 1940s

        

   Sidney Capello, pioneer of modern sleaze journalism and privateer of privacy, and Ira Wallace,  his partner in tabloid television

        

    Several doctors, all of them taken with--and  almost taken in by-Dena

There are others, captivated by a woman who tries to go home again, not knowing where home or love lie.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

"Utterly irresistible."

--Time

"ENJOYABLE . . . [FLAGG] KEEPS IT SIMPLE, SHE KEEPS IT BRIGHT, SHE KEEPS IT MOVING RIGHT ALONG--AND, MOST OF ALL, SHE KEEPS IT BELOVED."

--The New York Times Book Review

"CAPTIVATING . . . . This is a comic novel to welcome home with open arms. . . . Wandering back and forth through forty years of history as though it were backyard gossip, Flagg tells the life story of Dena Nordstrom, America's most popular female newscaster. . . . You'd have to be a stone to read WELCOME TO THE WORLD, BABY GIRL! without laughing and crying."

--The Christian Science Monitor

"SATISFYING . . . [FLAGG'S] FAITH IN THE HEALING POWER OF SMALL TOWNS AND FAMILY ARE REFRESHING."

--People

"ENTERTAINING. . . Readers of Flagg's previous novels will . . . immediately feel right at home in Elmwood Springs. . . . Flagg gradually and deftly pieces together the puzzle of Dena's life. . . . It's Dena's search for that missing part of her psyche, the secret that apparently haunted her mother's life, that propels the plot. And its revelation is quite a surprise."

--The Orlando Sentinel

"RICH . . . INTRIGUING . . . A CAST AND A PLACE EVERY BIT AS MEMORABLE AND TOUCHING AS THOSE AT HER WHISTLE STOP CAFE . . . [FLAGG] WAS PUT ON THIS EARTH TO WRITE."

--Southern Living

Fannie Flagg began writing and producing television specials at age nineteen and went on to distinguish herself as an actress and writer in television, films, and the theater. Her first novel, Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, was a New York Times bestseller. Her second novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe--also a New York Times bestseller--was produced by Universal Pictures as Fried Green Tomatoes. Ms. Flagg's script was nominated for both the Academy and Writers Guild of America Awards and won the highly regarded Scripters Award.