The Say So

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 need 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. Digging into her mother’s past, Meera finds troubling evidence of Edie, and also of her own mother’s secrets. 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 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.