Returns and Exchanges
A Novel
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to Wish List failed.
Please try again later
Remove from Wish List failed.
Please try again later
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
1 credit a month to buy any audiobook in our entire collection.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts.
Member-only deals & discounts.
Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Returns and Exchanges
Pre-order for $30.43
-
Narrated by:
About this listen
It’s December 24, 1979, just before closing at Baker-Taylor’s discount department store, and Fran (née Baker) is surveying her domain. Her husband, Fred, is charming customers in the front of the store, while last-minute shoppers in the toy aisle are fighting over the lone remaining Atari. The older Taylor kids are on register, while the younger ones’ chaos is contained to the stockroom. All is right in the world as the new decade approaches.
With four healthy children and financial stability their own parents could have only dreamed of, Fred and Fran are the picture of the American Dream—rags to riches—with a successful chain of family-owned stores built on years of hard work and long hours. Underneath the surface, however, the business is changing at a breakneck pace, and each member of the family is struggling to keep up.
Money is transforming Fred, and the extremes he will go to in order to fit in with the slicked-back high society crowd of Lexington, Kentucky, are embarrassing, if not downright dangerous. Josiah, the oldest son, 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 had. 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 learn that in matters of love and money, once it’s gone, it’s gone—no returns, no exchanges.
Critic Reviews
“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 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
“My favorite thing about Returns and Exchanges is it’s different, distinctive, absolutely packed with characters, relationships, times, and places not often told. But Kayla Rae Whitaker’s singular story is also timely and telling, sprawling and resonant, familiar and grand. It’s no small thing to craft a family saga that somehow feels new and ageless all at once, but Whitaker manages it with verve and grace.”—Laurie Frankel, author of This Is How It Always Is and Family Family
“Kayla Rae Whitaker is one of contemporary fiction’s most astute, empathetic chroniclers of all the messy complexities that make us human. With Returns and Exchanges, she deftly explores the price of ambition, the perils of self-discovery, and the ways in which one family grapples with the weight of its own success. It’s a novel brimming with truth and humor, and with a heart so strong you can hear it beat on the page.”—Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding
“Ambitious and engrossing, a weekend read, written with sympathy, insight, humor, and style.”—Susan Rieger, author of Like Mother, Like Mother
“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
“My favorite thing about Returns and Exchanges is it’s different, distinctive, absolutely packed with characters, relationships, times, and places not often told. But Kayla Rae Whitaker’s singular story is also timely and telling, sprawling and resonant, familiar and grand. It’s no small thing to craft a family saga that somehow feels new and ageless all at once, but Whitaker manages it with verve and grace.”—Laurie Frankel, author of This Is How It Always Is and Family Family
“Kayla Rae Whitaker is one of contemporary fiction’s most astute, empathetic chroniclers of all the messy complexities that make us human. With Returns and Exchanges, she deftly explores the price of ambition, the perils of self-discovery, and the ways in which one family grapples with the weight of its own success. It’s a novel brimming with truth and humor, and with a heart so strong you can hear it beat on the page.”—Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding
“Ambitious and engrossing, a weekend read, written with sympathy, insight, humor, and style.”—Susan Rieger, author of Like Mother, Like Mother
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.