Strangers
A Memoir of Marriage
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jan 13, 2026
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A gorgeous memoir about the sudden end to a seemingly happy marriage—an aching, love-filled, and transcendent account of surviving betrayal and discovering joy
“Riveting . . . examines the very nature of intimacy.”—Joyce Carol Oates
It was a great love story, one for the ages. The speed of our beginning and the speed of our ending felt like matching bookends. They both came out of nowhere. He wanted it, he wanted me. And then he didn’t.
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. Strangers is a stunning, deeply moving, compulsively readable memoir heralding the arrival of a thrilling new literary talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Immigration lawyer Burden traces the exhilarating start and excruciating dissolution of her two-decade marriage in this bruising debut. Dividing the narrative into five acts, Burden recounts how, during the Covid pandemic, her husband of 20 years abruptly walked out on her and their three children without explanation. After he left, Burden desperately searched for answers, blaming herself and relitigating their idyllic courtship, looking for signs of his unhappiness in his occasional coldness and passing moments of rigidity. As her husband's communication grew less frequent and he refused to see their children, she came to accept that she may have never truly known him. Then he initiated vicious divorce proceedings, transforming from "a benign stranger wandering out of my life" to "an adversary, determined to win." After the divorce was finalized, Burden published a "Modern Love" essay in the New York Times, breaking an emotional dam within her and allowing her to finally move on from her recursive cycle of self-blame. With unsparing emotional clarity, Burden examines the often-baffling ways relationships can fall apart, and charts a path for people looking to reassemble their own lives. It's a gut punch.
