From Publishers Weekly
From the talented storyteller whose Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe became a beloved bestseller and a successful film comes a sprawling, feel-good novel with an old-fashioned beginning, middle and end. The predominant setting is tiny Elmwood Springs, Mo., and the protagonist is 10-year-old Bobby Smith, an earnest Cub Scout also capable of sneaking earthworms into his big sister's bed. His father is the town pharmacist and his mother is local radio personality Neighbor Dorothy (whom readers will recognize from Flagg's Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!). In 1946, Harry Truman presides over a victorious nation anticipating a happy and prosperous future. During the next several decades, the plot expands to include numerous beguiling characters who interact with the Smith family among them, the Oatman Family Southern Gospel Singers, led by matriarch Minnie, who survive misadventures galore to find fame after an appearance on the Arthur Godfrey show in 1949, the same year Bobby's self-esteem soars when he wins the annual town bubble gum contest. Also on hand are tractor salesman Ham Sparks, who becomes amazingly successful in politics, despite his marriage to overwhelmingly shy Betty Raye Oatman, and well-liked mortician Cecil Figgs, a sponsor of Neighbor Dorothy, who, as a bachelor in the mid-century South, also enjoys a secret life. The effects of changing social mores are handled deftly; historical events as they impact little Elmwood Springs are duly noted, and everything is infused with the good humor and joie de vivre that are Flagg's stock-in-trade.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Flagg brings her readers back to 1940s Elmwood, MO, when a family of white gospel singers bursts into town. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
In the 1940s and '50s, small-town radio stations used local homemakers as hostesses for chatty programs. In the mythical town of Elmwood Springs, Missouri, that woman is Neighbor Dorothy. With her mother-in-law at the organ and a blind neighbor girl offering vocals, Dorothy brought the entire region into her parlor. This is the focus of Fannie Flagg's newest novel, STANDING IN THE RAINBOW. The novel grew out of an incident in her previous book, WELCOME TO THE WORLD, BABY GIRL. Rainbow starts in 1946 and takes listeners to the present. Flagg does the reading and gives a warm and personal feeling to each of the characters. She is especially effective with the two dominant female characters, Dorothy and Minnie Oatman, the matriarch of a gospel group. Flagg's Alabama accent is strong enough to give the reading a kind of Missouri Ozark feel but not so strong that it makes listening difficult. The backdrop of contemporary history is fun, as Flagg shows how the characters are shaped by events in the country. But the abridgment makes some of the years fly by too quickly, giving the final cassette (or discs) a choppy feel. The opening portions, though, are charming and engaging, both in content and reading. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Flagg, who made quite a splash with Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (1987), knows how to deliver a gentle read like no one else. We first met many members of this cast in Welcome Back to the World, Baby Girl (1998), one of whom is Dorothy Smith, the host of the daily radio show Neighbor Dorothy. The story begins in 1945. The war is over, the American economy is booming, and there is no better place in the world than Elmwood Springs, Missouri. At least that's what Bobby Smith thinks. He is the 10-year-old son of Neighbor Dorothy, and he's got the world wrapped around his little finger. It's through Bobby's eyes that we first enjoy the simplicity of these lives and times; the characters are realistic, not melodramatic or cliched, eliciting a beautiful mix of compassion and envy. Take, for instance, Beatrice, the "Little Blind Songbird," who sings on Dorothy's show. She is blind, true, but her spirit longs to see the world. And then there's Betty Raye, of the gospel-singing Oatmans, who dreads each day's performance and the endless travel. Dorothy, ever the mediator, arranges a swap, and the entire world is better for it. Such touching moments border on syrupy, but Flagg's straightforward, unadorned prose keeps them sweet and pure and grounded in everyday life. If there's a flaw in the narrative, it's the 50-year span; too soon Bobby grows up, times change, and one pines for those days once again. Mary Frances Wilkens
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“ANOTHER SURE-FIRE WINNER . . . A PLEASURE TO READ FROM BEGINNING TO END.”
–The Washington Post

“[A] BIG, JUICY MIDDLE-AMERICAN APPLE PIE OF A BOOK, SOMETIMES TART BUT MOSTLY SWEET.”
–Los Angeles Times

“FLAGG WRITES PAGE-TURNERS AND THIS IS ONE, IN SPADES. . . . The characters come at you thick and fast . . . Dorothy, prodigious pie-baker, supremely likeable and conscientious neighbor, [and] hostess of a wildly popular daily radio program; Minnie Oatman, the generously fleshed and bighearted lead singer (baritone) of the Oatman Family Gospel Singers; Beatrice, the Little Blind Songbird, who appears regularly on the Neighbor Dorothy program until she is swept away by the Oatmans; prickly Aunt Elner, who owns a series of orange cats, all named Sonny. Flagg’s inventiveness never loses its energy.”
–Newsday

“RIVETING FROM BEGINNING TO END . . . A sweeping story that runs from 1946 to 2000. Elmwood Springs [Missouri] grows from a post—World War II town surrounded by farmland to a twenty-first-century enclave near the highway but never loses its sense of utopia.”
–Rocky Mountain News

“GOOD NEWS FOR FANS OF FRIED GREEN TOMATOES . . . The action does not let up for a minute.”
–The New York Times Book Review

“FULL OF HOPE AND OPTIMISM . . . A book that will make you cry a little but laugh a lot.”
–The Washington Post

“As delicious a serving of Southern comfort as her Fried Green Tomatoes . . . Fannie invites her readers to make friends with a host of colorful Midwestern characters, who sneak into your heart and force you to live through all their joys and tribulations following World War II right up
to yesterday. In this stormy world of ‘now,’ Fannie Flagg offers escape,
at least momentarily, into the rainbow of her imagination.”
–LIZ SMITH
The New York Post

“A fast-paced, humorous, and lighthearted read, peopled with [Flagg’s] signature quirky and captivating characters. Standing in the Rainbow spans more than half a century, but Flagg is masterful at showing how small-town life in America evolves through the decades. . . . The reader [is] propelled by the infectious momentum of Flagg’s storytelling.”
–Birmingham News

“There’s a real celebration of life here, an affirmation that success and happiness are the results of simple kindness, gratitude, and courage.”
–The Christian Science Monitor

“ENDEARING . . . The charm lies in Flagg’s simple yet expressive tone.”
–People

“What is so appealing about Elmwood Springs? It’s Fannie Flagg’s unswerving devotion to folksy, sly humor and her uncanny ability to make a small town a big character in her sweetly engaging fourth novel. . . . Flagg ushers you into the residents’ hearts and minds with a flourish. She sits you right down in Neighbor Dorothy’s home during her radio broadcast, hands you a plate of homemade cookies, and assures you that putting up your feet and staying a bit is the right thing to do.”
–Miami Herald

“Like Rebecca Wells’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Flagg’s book tells the story not just of the town’s residents, but also of the changes in a community and a nation. . . . As Tot Whooten says at the outset, ‘I could go on and on, but I won’t. I hate when somebody tells me how something ends.’ Let’s just say that there’s a pot of gold at the end of Standing in the Rainbow.”
–Providence Journal

“A warm, witty, refreshing journey through fifty years with the residents of Elmwood Springs, Missouri . . . As time rolls along until the year 2000, we watch an assortment of lovable characters adapt to a changing America. And we thank Fannie Flagg for a look at those years before ‘the world had flipped over like a giant pancake.’ ”
–The Dallas Morning News

“A SPRAWLING, FEEL-GOOD NOVEL . . . The effects of changing social mores are handled deftly; historical events as they impact little Elmwood Springs are duly noted, and everything is infused with good humor and joie de vivre that are Flagg’s stock-in-trade.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[Flagg] is an engaging storyteller with a gift for creating compelling female characters and comic set pieces. . . . Elmwood Springs is populated with an endless supply of eccentric characters and comic visitors who push the story along.”
–The Baltimore Sun

“Flagg is a storyteller with a big heart, an engaging sense of humor and plenty of ambition. From those hopeful post-World War II days, she tracks the comedies and setbacks of the folks of Elmwood Springs right up to the turn of the century.”
–Houston Chronicle

“As the decades unfold, each character flowers in unexpected ways. . . . Hilarious, charming, authentic–a winner all the way.”
–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)


Review
Praise for Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

?A real novel and a good one [from] the busy brain of a born storyteller.?


?Courageous and wise.?

?Try to stop laughing.? --Liz Smith

?It?s very good, in fact, just wonderful.?

Praise for Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

?Another winner . . . an assortment of zany, lovable, and intriguing characters.?


?A well-choreographed story of loyalty and survival that zigzags deftly across the postwar years . . . Flagg can cook up memorable women from the most down-to-earth ingredients.? ?Publishers Weekly (starred review)

?Flagg gives popular fiction a good name. . . . Let others pretend to literary greatness. Fannie goes for literary goodness--and achieves it.?
?St. Louis Post-Dispatch


From the Hardcover edition.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Fans of Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! will rejoice that Fannie Flagg returns to Elmwood Springs, Missouri, for this character-rich novel. When a group of very spirited white gospel singers arrive in town, local citizens begin to buzz. Gentle satire; good spirits; and a generous batch of surprises.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Good news! Fannie’s back in town--and the town is among the leading characters in her new novel.
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. Then there is Tot Whooten, the beautician whose luck is as bad as her hairdressing skills; Beatrice Woods, the Little Blind Songbird; Cecil Figgs, the Funeral King; and the fabulous Minnie Oatman, lead vocalist of the Oatman Family Gospel Singers.
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.
Once again, Fannie Flagg gives us a story of richly human characters, the saving graces of the once-maligned middle classes and small-town life, and the daily contest between laughter and tears. Fannie truly writes from the heartland, and her storytelling is, to quote Time, "utterly irresistible."

Author Biography: 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, most recently, 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.
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.
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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Book Magazine - Anneli Rufus

In small-town Elmwood Springs, Missouri, on the heels of World War II, life holds promise for little boys like Bobby Smith. America is a nation of "Coca-Cola, chocolate- covered peanuts, jukeboxes, Oxydol, Ivory Snow, oleomargarine, and the Atomic Bomb" and is "bigger, better, richer, and stronger" than anyplace else. Bobby's dad is the town's pharmacist, and his mom hosts the state's most popular morning radio program from the family's living room. This ambitious effort from the author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe spans fifty years fraught with scandal and romance. The Smiths and their friends and neighbors display a kind of big-hearted optimism that has the potential to reduce their story to sentimental mush. Flagg's knack for humor and observation lend the characters a depth that rescues what might otherwise have been a typical, dramatic saga. For all its myriad twists and turns, this tale never takes an easy way out.

Publishers Weekly

From the talented storyteller whose Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe became a beloved bestseller and a successful film comes a sprawling, feel-good novel with an old-fashioned beginning, middle and end. The predominant setting is tiny Elmwood Springs, Mo., and the protagonist is 10-year-old Bobby Smith, an earnest Cub Scout also capable of sneaking earthworms into his big sister's bed. His father is the town pharmacist and his mother is local radio personality Neighbor Dorothy (whom readers will recognize from Flagg's Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!). In 1946, Harry Truman presides over a victorious nation anticipating a happy and prosperous future. During the next several decades, the plot expands to include numerous beguiling characters who interact with the Smith family among them, the Oatman Family Southern Gospel Singers, led by matriarch Minnie, who survive misadventures galore to find fame after an appearance on the Arthur Godfrey show in 1949, the same year Bobby's self-esteem soars when he wins the annual town bubble gum contest. Also on hand are tractor salesman Ham Sparks, who becomes amazingly successful in politics, despite his marriage to overwhelmingly shy Betty Raye Oatman, and well-liked mortician Cecil Figgs, a sponsor of Neighbor Dorothy, who, as a bachelor in the mid-century South, also enjoys a secret life. The effects of changing social mores are handled deftly; historical events as they impact little Elmwood Springs are duly noted, and everything is infused with the good humor and joie de vivre that are Flagg's stock-in-trade. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Flagg brings her readers back to 1940s Elmwood, MO, when a family of white gospel singers bursts into town. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews