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Welcome to the World, Baby Girl
Fannie Flagg, 1998
Random House
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780804118682
Summary
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 publisher.)