Returns and Exchanges

Following her dazzling (The Guardian) debut, The Animators, Kayla Rae Whitaker tells the sweeping story of one Southern familys 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-Taylors is a family business. Fran (ne Baker) and Fred Taylor run a successful chain of discount retail stores in Kentucky and theyre 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 to which 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 familys stable core, is falling for Wendy, a cashier at Baker- Taylors, 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 its gone, its gone no returns, no exchanges.