STRANGERS

by Belle Burden

In the handful of books that seem to be everywhere at the moment, Belle Burden’s Strangers surely ranks in the top five.  As often seems to happen, when I picked it up and started to read, the book was being discussed everywhere. In Strangers, Burden tells the stunning story of her 20-year marriage and how one morning early in the COVID-19 pandemic, her husband walked out and left her and their children forever.

Having been raised in a prominent New York family, Burden never questioned her husband assuming the role of financial manager in their marriage.  Despite her education and a successful career as a lawyer, she was happy to relinquish that baffling responsibility to him.  Hers was the more traditional role of raising the children and managing two homes.  After the break-up, she began to realize that her husband had been systematically rewriting their financial documents to her and the children’s detriment and to his advantage. The reader can’t help but share Burden’s deep pain and feelings of betrayal and reels to think that a devoted husband could leave his wife and kids so abruptly and completely.

Burden writes in such an honest, gut-wrenching manner that the reader feels the rawness of her wounds.  But most incredible is how Burden describes her slow and determined recovery in such a life-affirming fashion. Her brilliant observations about how her family and society had instilled in her a belief system about women and their roles in a marriage will surely open your eyes.  Every woman (and man)—married or not—should read Strangers. We can all learn some lessons about relationships and self-reliance from this incredible memoir. (Liz)