The Say So

Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Best Books of the Summer | SIBA Read This Next! List Pick, June 2023 | The Millions Most Anticipated (June 2023) | The Boston Globe’s Best New Books for Summer 2023 | Audiobook Winner of AudioFile''s Earphones Award | Foreword INDIES 2023 Book of the Year Award Honorable Mention | Townsend Award Finalist

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.