Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

By Fannie Flagg

Book Overview

A funny, serious, and compelling 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). "[This] tale of tough, eccentric, endearing women who first endure and then prevail. . . . will make you laugh out loud--and shed a few tears. . . . Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! is another rattling success."-- Richmond Times-Dispatch 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 044900578X
• ISBN13: 9780449005781
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

The Elmwood Springs journey starts. Book 1

If you like stories about the 40s and 50s these books are for you. Great characters that draw you in

A MUST READ

I bought this book at a Library Book Sale, and I brought on my vacation to a Rhode Island beach last year, and I enjoyed it immensely. I loved it, and Ms. Flagg wrote a good yarn. The storyline was really good, and I couldn't put it down. A MUST READ. If you like a good southern story, you will definitely enjoy this one.

Breathtaking!

This book is my all time favortie book! I laughed and cried and couldn't put it down! Fannie Flagg so easily captivates her audience and this book is no exception!

Welcome to a fantastic book...

I really, really enjoyed this. I didn't think I would. I really hated the title. It started off kind of slowly, and I really disliked the main character, Dena Nordstrom, an up-and-coming television journalist/reporter who focuses on only her career and is experiencing stress-related illness because of it. I didn't really understand a few of the beginning parts, mostly the ones about the folks in Elmwood Springs, but after a bit, I got into them and enjoyed those parts very much. Flagg switches POV almost constantly, and it keeps the book from getting stale. Dena's illness puts her into therapy (which she attends unwillingly), and her therapist (second one- first one had to send her to a colleague because he fell in love with her) starts to get her to dig up her past, which includes a mother who moved her from place to place constantly and finally abandoned her at age 15. Dena goes back to Elmwood Springs, MO to the only living relatives she has, to try to find out WHY her mother left. This, my friends, is something you wouldn't expect. I was amazed when I realized WHY her mother left. I never saw it coming. Very, very interesting book, everything weaves together very nicely. Great plot, great story, great characters. Wonderful book, very highly recommended.

A sophisticated book by a great author.

Fannie Flagg is truly improving as an author! Her first novel: Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man was good, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe was great, this book is wonderful!A very interesting plot about a newscaster named Dena Nordstrom who lost her way home. She finds it with the help of two psychiatrists, a bleeding ulcer, a fellow, older newscaster, and of course the hilarious cast of characters from her hometown in Missouri! Aunt Elner is one of the greatest characters in literature! Under the ghost of "Neighbor Dorothy" a 1940s homemaker who had a radio show which "on a cold, clear day" could be heard all the way to the Canadian border, Dena learns the meaning of home in much the same way Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz does: in a voyage of self-discovery, including finding out some shocking, sad, truths about her mother's and her own past and origens.A well-written sophisticated, funny, suspenseful book which will have you flipping pages to the end. Great plot, beautifully characterized, will take you home.

Why did the book have to end?

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! was one of the most enjoyable books that I have read recently. Full of humor. The characters were great... I tried to savor the last 100 pages so it wouldn't end! It had all the elements of a good story...with twists...I found myself getting mad at Dena, and then liking her again...My only regret is that I didn't save this book for a vacation or the beach...and I do hope there will be a sequel! Or at least a movie! Fannie Flagg did it again..in fact I went out and bought Daisy Fay today!