Returns and Exchanges

Following her 'dazzling' (The Guardian) debut, The Animators, Kayla Rae Whitaker tells the sweeping story of one Southern family's rise and fall throughout the 1980s, a tragicomic tour de force about love and marriage, parents and children, and the promise and limitations of the American Dream.

Baker-Taylor's is a family business. Fran (nee Baker) and Fred Taylor run a successful chain of discount retail stores in Kentucky and they're cautiously expanding- Ataris and Hot Wheels, new branches and new management. With four healthy children and financial stability their own parents could have only dreamed of, Fred and Fran are the American dream- rags to riches, a family dynasty built on years of hard work and long hours. Underneath the surface, however, the business is changing at a breakneck pace, and each family member is struggling to keep up.

Money is transforming Fred, and the extremes he will go to fit in with the high society crowd are embarrassing, if not downright dangerous. Oldest son Josiah wants nothing to do with the family business, Sam is seeing things that might not really be there, and Benny and Birdie are growing up with a fraction of the parenting that their older brothers did. Meanwhile, Fran, her family's stable core, is falling for Wendy, a cashier at Baker-Taylor's, risking everything along the way.

While trying to maintain the facade of a perfect success story, Fred and Fran discover that in matters of love and money, once it's gone, it's gone - no returns, no exchanges.


'Whitaker has written a sprawling, extravagantly intelligent novel about people quietly breaking free from constraints - marital, gender, class ... Superb. Like a blue-collar Franzen novel.'
-Kirkus Reviews, starred review

'This is the novel I've been missing- a sprawling, emotional and true family saga. I picked it up knowing nothing about it and fell completely in love with the characters, the story, the setting. All of it. It's damn near perfect.'
-Ayelet Waldman, New York Times bestselling author of Love & Treasure

'Whitaker expertly juggles the expansive cast of characters and elicits sympathy for all of them even when they exhibit the worst parts of themselves. Returns and Exchanges is an openhearted epic of the American dream and the bargains struck to achieve it.'
-Publishers Weekly, starred review