In March 2020, Belle Burden was safe and secure with her family at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, navigating the early days of the pandemic together—building fires in the late afternoons, drinking whisky sours, making roast chicken. Then, with no warning or explanation, her husband of twenty years announced that he was leaving her. Overnight, her caring, steady partner became a man she hardly recognized. He exited his life with her like an actor shrugging off a costume.

In Strangers, Burden revisits her marriage, searching for clues that her husband was not who she always thought he was. As she examines her relationship through a new lens, she reckons with her own family history and the lessons she intuited about how a woman is expected to behave in the face of betrayal. Through all of it, she is transformed. The discreet, compliant woman she once was—someone nicknamed “Belle the Good”— gives way to someone braver, someone determined to use her voice.

With unflinching honesty and profound grace, Burden charts a path through heartbreak to show the power of a woman who refuses to give up on love. 

Belle Burden holds a BA from Harvard College and a law degree from the New York University School of Law. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times. She lives with her children in New York City.

Roxanne J. Coady is the founder of R.J. Julia Booksellers Ltd. in Madison, CT. The bookstore was created by Coady to be “a place of inspiration, information, and excitement.” She also founded an online retailer, JustTheRightBook.com, which is a personalized book of the month club.

Lastly, she is the founder of Read to Grow, an organization that works to improve early literacy for all Connecticut children.

“Reads like a love story and a horror story and, in one nail-biting section, like a financial thriller.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

“Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage, is a beautifully written eulogy for the loss of a relationship that had been loving, trusting, ‘traditional’ (in the best, unironic sense of the word)—riveting reading for its heartrending candor. Belle Burden examines the very nature of intimacy, vulnerability, and, in practical terms, the naïveté of many a young woman who falls in love with a ‘perfect’ mate.’”—Joyce Carol Oates