Enormous Wings: A Novel

In her latest novel, Laurie Frankel draws from twentieth century novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s classic A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings as well as the ancient Biblical accounts of Sarah, Elizabeth and Mary, the only women I'd ever heard of with pregnancies more miraculous and improbable than protagonist Pepper Mills, a retirement home resident who finds herself pregnant at seventy-seven. This contemporary reimagining compelled me to consider how scared they must have been, how torn between confusion and joy, how beleaguered by the attentions of everyone in the world and exhausted by all of the ill-informed, unsought opinions which had nothing to do with them or their families. How it must have taken time to believe that what was happening was happening, even in the face of mounting evidence. How it must have taken time to get their heads around it all, and how deep-down proud they must have felt once they did. People aren't always good at recognizing the hand of God in the aged or unsavory. We like our miracles gold and glowing, not gray, not noisome, not mortal. And not in our yards. When miracles are actually miraculous, they're too improbable to do all they must. Pregnancy is miraculous. Childbirth is miraculous. Babies are miraculous. But only some pregnancies, some births, some babies--the ones we bargain and beg for, the miracles we seek, expect, even demand. Sarah and Elizabeth and Pepper are unacceptably, uselessly miraculous, too old to be beatific, too unimagined to be believed. They do not inspire wonder in the divine. If anything, they undermine it. But the geriatric generation? They excel at finding the holy in aging bodies. Used to the unfamiliar. Expecting what is unforeseen. Sometimes it's showy miracles—a pregnancy a quarter-century post menopause. Sometimes it's quiet miracles—a pregnancy a quarter-century before menopause. And sometimes it's so nebulous we don't even realize it is a miracle–Enormous Wings, nirvanic as tacos.