Each is trying to figure out her own path. In Friends and Strangers, we follow two women: Elizabeth as she moves from the city to the suburbs after having a baby, and her babysitter Sam, a student at the local university. A Massachusetts native, Courtney now lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two children. In 2017, she wrote the forewords to new editions of two of her favorite children’s books: Anne of Green Gables and Little Women. She is a co-editor, with Courtney Martin, of the essay anthology Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists. Courtney’s writing has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, New York magazine, Elle, Glamour, Allure, Real Simple, and O: The Oprah Magazine, among many others. Her fifth novel, Friends and Strangers, will be published in June 2020.

Saints For All Occasions, was named one of the ten best books of the year by the Washington Post, a New York Times Critic’s Pick for 2017, and a New England Book Award nominee. It is soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon and distributed by Fox 2000, and it will be translated into 17 languages. The Engagements was one of People Magazine’s Top Ten Books of 2013 and an Irish Times Best Book of the Year. Maine was named a Best Book of the Year by Time magazine, and a Washington Post Notable Book for 2011. Courtney Sullivan is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Commencement, Maine, The Engagements, and Saints For All Occasions.

But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth's father-in-law, the true differences between the women's lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.Ī masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life. She's worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she's always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group, her 'influencer' sister's Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore.Įnter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions (named one of the Washington Post's Ten Best Books of the Year and a New York Times Critics' Pick).Įlisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City.

Friends and strangers courtney sullivan