Now that she's conquered rehab and romance, best-selling novelist Carrie Fisher boldly goes where no man has gone before: motherhood.

Hollywood screenwriter Cora Sharpe has taken to writing letters to the unborn child she's tentatively dubbed Esme—even though it sounds like a noise your nose makes. But then, Cora has what one of the endless intimates she thinks of as her Committee calls "a big loud life," and recent events have been no exception. Her confidant and writing partner, Bud, has been on a bipolar roller coaster. Her dear friend William, AIDS-ridden, has finally taken leave of his life, with the aplomb befitting "a suburban show business sultan." And in the vacuum that follows his departure, Cora's romance with quiet, gentle Ray has suddenly flickered and expired. Then Cora finds out she's pregnant, and even the Committee can't steer her through this one. In a fight-or-flight confrontation with maturity, flight seems to have the upper hand. So when her mother, Viv, tries to rally support for her latest madcap scheme—to kidnap her Alzheimer's-stricken father from a nursing home and take him back to Whitewright, Texas, the place of his birth—Cora, for once, is game. With Bud in tow, she signs on for what turns out to be a cosmic (not to mention comic) exploration of the urges that drive us to feather our nests and fill them, to flee them and find our way home. With singular deftness, Fisher captures the ambivalence and absurdity of modern maternity, in her wittiest and wisest novel to date.