Ellen Franck isn''t in love with Big Bird. After all, he''s a big yellow Sesame Street character -- and she''s an intelligent single woman with a fabulous job. On the other hand, Big Bird is looking like a better candidate for fatherhood every day: he''s tall, affectionate, and steadily employed. And right now, for Ellen, thirty-five years old and dying to have a baby, almost any father will do.

In her hilarious and heartbreaking new novel, Laura Zigman, bestselling author of Animal Husbandry, explores what happens when the life we''ve chosen isn''t that life we expected it to be. And at this point Ellen Franck is rethinking all her choices.

Mired in a relationship with a man who is better at brooding than breeding, sister to a woman who can''t seem to stop having babies, and working under a boss who is about to have the baby shower of the decade, Ellen knows the path to motherhood is clear. All she has to do is leave her relationship, horrify her family, find an anonymous father, and become independently wealthy.

Piece of cake.

Ellen Franck isn''t in love with Big Bird. After all, he''s a big yellow Sesame Street character -- and she''s an intelligent single woman with a fabulous job. On the other hand, Big Bird is looking like a better candidate for fatherhood every day: he''s tall, affectionate, and steadily employed. And right now, for Ellen, thirty-five years old and dying to have a baby, almost any father will do.

In her hilarious and heartbreaking new novel, Laura Zigman, bestselling author of Animal Husbandry, explores what happens when the life we''ve chosen isn''t that life we expected it to be. And at this point Ellen Franck is rethinking all her choices.

Mired in a relationship with a man who is better at brooding than breeding, sister to a woman who can''t seem to stop having babies, and working under a boss who is about to have the baby shower of the decade, Ellen knows the path to motherhood is clear. All she has to do is leave her relationship, horrify her family, find an anonymous father, and become independently wealthy.

Piece of cake.