Enormous Wings: A Novel

From the beloved New York Times bestselling author Laurie Frankel, an exuberant and timely new novel.

"Becky Ann Baker doesn’t just voice Pepper, she animates the entire ensemble beautifully ... For a book this reliant on comic timing to carry its politics and important questions about elder and body autonomy, the audio format isn’t just incidental, it is essential." —Sixty and Me

"With wit and a broad vocal range, Becky Ann Baker narrates this provocative audiobook...Acute observations on aging, fertility, and the media make this thought-provoking story accessible and compelling." — Kirkus

This program is read by actor Becky Ann Baker, who has appeared in Freaks and Geeks and Girls.

At seventy-seven, Pepper Mills is too old to be a stranger in a strange land. She didn’t choose the Vista View Retirement Community of Austin, Texas—that would be her three grown children—but when she grudgingly moves in, she not only makes new friends, she falls in love. Then the exhaustion, vomiting, and confusion start. She fears it’s cancer, dementia, a stroke. But a raft of tests later, the news is even more shocking: She’s pregnant.

As word gets out, everyone wants a piece of her: the press and paparazzi, activists and medical researchers, belly-rubbers and rubber-neckers all descending on Vista View while Pepper struggles to determine her next move. Soon she has some hard decisions to make—and some she’s not allowed to make.

Enormous Wings is an urgent novel about female agency and bodily autonomy, morality and mortality. It’s about what happens when you don’t get to choose anymore. It’s about motherhood and family, sex and love and friendship, and how those bedrocks—even so late in the day—can still change, and then change everything.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company