Good Company — Kate Christensen

Our shelves could use more women like Rachel and Sam as a counterpoint to men in midlife who’ve dominated fiction for decades. . . . It’s exhilarating to read an uninhibited female character who is rife with contradictions. . . . Christensen also does a skillful job of animating difficult family relationships while avoiding a conventional arc of forgiveness. . . . In the end, it is surprising to see where Rachel meets herself.” — New York TimesA deeply endearing story about confronting one’s past and constructing a new future—under extreme duress . . . . Welcome Home, Stranger . . . arrives at the most lovely ending of a novel I’ve read all year. — The Washington PostKate Christensen’s new novel, Welcome Home, Stranger, is a revelation, offering characters as real as your family and friends, a rich, vividly drawn setting, grab-you-by-the-throat drama and always, lurking in the shadows, a fierce authorial intelligence. What more could you ask? — Richard Russo, author of Somebody’s FoolTo the great literature of going home again we can now add Kate Christensen’s superb new novel Welcome Home, Stranger, a triumph of intelligence and wit (which will surprise none of her many fans). The prodigal here is a brilliant journalist grieving the loss of a very difficult mother while attempting peace with those she left behind: a resentful sister and an ex-lover who can be neither trusted nor forgotten. A spellbinding book from one of our best chroniclers of the very American struggle to strive for excellence while still living in community with others. — Ann Packer, author of The Children’s CrusadeA fantastic study in loss—the grief kind and the yearning too, oh my god the yearning! Plus menopause. Plus Portland, Maine. I loved it. — Catherine Newman, author of We All Want Impossible Things