Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

Fannie Flagg

Dena Nordstrom is a climbing in the television new business in the 1970's. By the middle of the decade she has become the most recognized female in television news, and is helping change the look of news broadcasts in the future. Yet she has a problem. Something in her past has been repressed for over fifteen years. She retreats from all close personal relationships.

Meanwhile, in Elmwood Springs, Missouri, her cousins and aunt are proud of her. They remember her father before he was killed in World War II. She and her mother lived there for a few years. One day her mother took her and left that cozy town. From then on they traveled from city to city. Dena never understood what was going on. She only knew she had loved her mother.

Dena is a nice person in a business that is changing. News broadcasts are slowly moving from straight news to a more gossipy, destructive format. She refuses to play the tabloid news game. As the pressure grows she is more and more stressed. When she starts having ulcers, her doctor sends her to see a psychiatrist. She resents this person and refuses to talk. Her body, though, has other intentions. She finally starts learning about herself. Will she be able to handle the secrets that have been buried for so many years?

This is a charming, meandering book. Each chapter heading tells the reader the time and the location of the upcoming chapter. It starts in Elmwood Springs in 1948 when Dena is four. It ends there about thirty years later. In between times the books jumps back and forth through the different characters and aspects of Dena's history. It is a heart-wrenching and heartwarming story of a person's search for a past truth and then how it is handled. I was extremely surprised at the hidden background waiting to be revealed.

It loops around on itself. Seemingly disconnected events are forgotten before finally brought back. Some characters meander in and out only because that is how life is, not because they are an essential part of Dena's search. She has to learn about herself; then she can really reach out to the others who love her.