Summary and Reviews of Welcome To The World, Baby Girl by Fannie Flagg

PREFACE
Elmwood Springs, Missouri
1948

In the late forties Elmwood Springs, in southern Missouri, seems more or less like a thousand other small towns scattered across America.

Downtown is only a block long with a Rexall drugstore on one end and the Elmwood Springs Masonic Hall on the other. If you walk from the Masonic Hall to the Rexall, you will go by the Blue Ribbon cleaners, a Cat's Paw shoe repair shop with a pink neon shoe in the window, the Morgan Brothers department store, the bank, and a little alley with stairs on one side of a building leading up to the second floor, where the Dixie Cahill School of Tap and Twirl is located. If it is a Saturday morning you'll hear a lot of heavy tapping and dropping of batons upstairs by the Tappettes, a troop of blue-spangled Elmwood Springs beauties, or at least their parents think so. Past the alley is the Trolley Car diner, where you can get the world's best chili dog and an orange drink for 15 cents. Just ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. This novel tells of Dena's long journey home. What does home look and sound and smell like to you? Is it a place or a state of mind?
   
2. "Elmswood Springs is a town that likes itself." Do you agree with this assessment of Dena's hometown? How does Dena's opinion of the town change over the course of the novel?
   
3. The Smith family talks about being able to stop time. Would you like to have this power? If you could, when would you freeze time in your own life?
   
4. Aunt Elner would want to be at home with her family and friends if she knew the end of the world was coming. What would you do?
   
5. What has caused Dena's identity crisis? How does she manage to keep the people in her ...