The Say So
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the award-winning author of Over the Plain Houses, comes a major novel about two young women contending with unplanned pregnancies in different eras.
Edie Carrigan didn't plan to "get herself" pregnant, much less end up in a home for unwed mothers. In 1950s North Carolina, illegitimate pregnancy is kept secret, wayward women require psychiatric cures, and adoption is always the best solution. Not even Edie’s closest friend, Luce Waddell, understands what Edie truly wants: to keep and raise the baby.
Twenty-five years later, Luce is a successful lawyer, and her daughter Meera now faces the same decision Edie once did. Like Luce, Meera is fiercely independent and plans to handle her unexpected pregnancy herself. Along the way, Meera finds startling secrets about her mother’s past, including the long-ago friendship with Edie. As the three women’s lives intertwine and collide, the story circles age-old questions about female awakening, reproductive choice, motherhood, adoption, sex, and missed connections.
For fans of Brit Bennett's The Mothers and Jennifer Weiner's Mrs. Everything, The Say So is a timely novel that asks: how do we contend with the rippling effects of the choices we've made? With equal parts precision and tenderness, Franks has crafted a sweeping epic about the coming of age of the women’s movement that reverberates through the present day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Franks (Over the Plain Houses) follows in her beautiful latest the ripple effects after a teenager is forced to give up her baby. It's 1957 in Charlotte, N.C., and quiet, pretty Edie Carrigan falls for Simon Bloom, an older Jewish boy, whom Edie's parents don't approve of. Edie's mother would rather Edie spend time with her former beau, Aster Eriksen, but after Edie becomes pregnant, she's sent to a home for unwed mothers, where she's expected to give her baby up for adoption. That's not what Edie wants, though, and after giving birth she refuses to sign the court papers. She visits her good friend Luce Waddell, hoping for help. Instead, a dramatic scene unfolds between the two of them, laying bare the limits of the girls' friendship and what they're able to share with each other. Franks then jumps forward 25 years, with Luce having raised a daughter, who has also become unexpectedly pregnant, and the situation provides an opportunity for Edie and Luce to reconnect. In one devastating plot turn after another, Franks injects bracing honesty into her depictions of the characters, always in gorgeous prose. Describing Edie and Simon's erstwhile love, she writes, "their love loosened and broke, like decomposing fruit. It was a shock, to see it prove so seasonal." This will stay with readers.
