Friday Fiction: Fannie Flagg

--by Hanje Richards
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Fannie Flagg's writing career began behind the scenes of television's Candid Camera and progressed to out-in-front as performer-writer. Her acting achievements led to roles in motion pictures including Five Easy Pieces, with Jack Nicholson; Stay Hungry, with Jeff Bridges and Sally Field; and Crazy in Alabama, with Melanie Griffith. For the theater in New York, she did Patio Porch and Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, and played the lead role in the Broadway musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
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Her first novel, Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, was on the New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks. Her second, Fried Green Tomatoes at The Whistle Stop Cafe, praised by Harper Lee and Eudora Welty, was on the Times list for thirty-six weeks. It was made into the memorable hit movie Fried Green Tomatoes, starring Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates. The screenplay, also written by Flagg, earned her the coveted Scripters Award and was nominated for an Academy Award and the Writers Guild of America Screen Award. Her reading of the Random House audiobook received a Grammy nomination.

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That book gave way to an even bigger hardcover success for Welcome To The World, Baby Girl!, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, which The Christian Science Monitor called "captivating . . . a comic novel to open with open arms." Flagg lives in California and in Alabama.

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Can’t Wait To Get To Heaven - Combining southern warmth with unabashed emotion and side-splitting hilarity, Fannie Flagg takes readers back to Elmwood Springs, Missouri, where the most unlikely and surprising experiences of a high-spirited octogenarian inspire a town to ponder the age-old question: Why are we here? In this comedy-mystery, those near and dear to Elner discover something wonderful: Heaven is actually right here, right now, with people you love, neighbors you help, friendships you keep.
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Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man - We meet Daisy Fay Harper in the spring of 1952, where she’s “not doing much except sitting around waiting for the sixth grade.” When she leaves Shell Beach, Mississippi, in September 1959, she is packed up and ready for the Miss America Pageant, vowing “I won’t come back until I’m somebody.” Sassy and irreverent from the get-go, Daisy Fay takes us on a rollicking journey through her formative years on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. There, at The End of the Road of the South, the family malt shop freezer holds unspeakable things, society maven Mrs. Dot hosts Junior Debutante meetings and shares inspired thoughts for the week, and Daisy Fay’s Daddy hatches a quick-cash scheme that involves resurrecting his daughter from the dead in a carefully orchestrated miracle

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Fannie Flagg’s Original Whistle Stop Café Cookbook: Featuring Fried Green Tomatoes, Southern Barbecue, Banana Split Cake and Many Other Great Recipes - * Skinless Fried Chicken * Pork Chops with Apples and Sweet Potatoes * Baked Ham and Pineapple Rings * Baked Turkey with Traditional Cornbread Dressing * Black-eyed Peas * Fried Okra * Creamed Onions * Broccoli Casserole * Southern Cream Gravy * Fried Catfish * Scalloped Oysters * Down Home Crab Cakes * Beaten Biscuits * Corn Pones * Lemon Ice Box Pie * Kentucky Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie * And much more!
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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café - The story of a Depression-era friendship between two women, Ruth and Idgie, and a 1980s friendship between Evelyn, a middle aged housewife, and Ninny, an elderly woman who knew Ruth and Idgie.
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A Redbird Christmas - Deep in the southernmost part of Alabama, along the banks of a lazy winding river, lies the sleepy little community known as Lost River, a place that time itself seems to have forgotten. After a startling diagnosis from his doctor, Oswald T. Campbell leaves behind the cold and damp of the oncoming Chicago winter to spend what he believes will be his last Christmas in the warm and welcoming town of Lost River. There he meets the postman who delivers mail by boat, the store owner who nurses a broken heart, the ladies of the Mystic Order of the Royal Polka Dots Secret Society, who do clandestine good works... And he meets a little redbird named Jack, who is at the center of this tale of a magical Christmas when something so amazing happened that those who witnessed it have never forgotten it.
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Standing in the Rainbow - Along with Neighbor Dorothy, the lady with the smile in her voice, whose daily radio broadcasts keep us delightfully informed on all the local news, we also meet Bobby, her ten-year-old son, destined to live a thousand lives, most of them in his imagination; Norma and Macky Warren and their ninety-eight-year-old Aunt Elner; the oddly sexy and charismatic Hamm Sparks, who starts off in life as a tractor salesman and ends up selling himself to the whole state and almost the entire country; and the two women who love him as differently as night and day. The time is 1946 until the present. The town is Elmwood Springs, Missouri, right in the middle of the country, in the midst of the mostly joyous transition from war to peace, aiming toward a dizzyingly bright future.

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Welcome to the World, Baby Girl - Many inhabit small-town or suburban America. But this time, her heroine is urban: a brainy, beautiful, and ambitious rising star of 1970s television. Dena Nordstrom, pride of the network, is a woman whose future is full of promise, her present rich with complications, and her past marked by mystery.