The Other Wife

＂Extraordinary. A story about belonging in liminal spaces, and longing for things seemingly just out of reach. A searing, beautiful book.＂ --Kiley Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Come and Get It

＂Complex and enduring...We would follow Zuzu anywhere.＂ --Oprah Daily

A big-hearted novel of nostalgia and longing, and a poignant exploration of how we choose to love.

Zuzu met her best friend Cash on the first day of college, and nothing was ever the same. Tall, witty, and popular, his friendship represented a kind of belonging for Zuzu, who had always felt like an outsider growing up biracial in her rural hometown. Though their friendship was charged with longing, it never progressed to romance. Now approaching her forties, Zuzu has built a stable life with her wife Agnes, a steadfast and career-driven lawyer. Yet Zuzu is haunted by the choices that have shaped her: living with her mother instead of her father in childhood, pursuing law over art, and marrying Agnes while harboring complex feelings for Cash.

When a sudden loss pulls Zuzu back to her hometown, the ＂what ifs＂ in her mind become louder than ever, and she begins to unwind the turns that have led her here. Will she embrace the choices she’s made, or risk everything for a chance to chase the past? A novel that speaks to unfulfilled desires and the euphoric nostalgia that’s particular to the beginning of middle age, The Other Wife is as heartfelt as it is daring in its deep reckoning with the past and quest for true joy.

Jackie Thomas-Kennedy was awarded a Stegner Fellowship in 2014. She is the winner of the 2019 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize, and her work has been recorded for NPR’s Selected Shorts. Her stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, One Story, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University School of the Arts, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife and their family.