The Other Wife

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The Other Wife is a bold debut about race and class, love and nostalgia and learning to live with the life we have chosen Susan 'Zuzu' Braeburn is almost forty. She has the life she's always dreamed of - a beautiful house, a child, a successful partner. But something between her and Agnes has been off for a long time, and she can't help but wonder 'what if'. What if she had chosen to live with her father instead of her mother after their divorce To pursue art over law And, most importantly, to pursue her feelings for her male best friend from college, Cash, instead of marrying Agnes When an unexpected loss takes her back to her hometown, over a single wintery weekend, the questions in Zuzu's mind become too loud to ignore. She grapples with the choices she's made and the knowledge that she doesn't have infinite time to make changes in her life. The Other Wife speaks to unfulfilled desires and the euphoric nostalgia that's particular to the beginning of middle age; it is heartfelt and daring in its reckoning with the quest for joy.

Reviews

Extraordinary. A story about belonging in liminal spaces, and longing for things seemingly just out of reach. A searing, beautiful book -- Kiley Reid, author of Such a Fun Age
The Other Wife captures the dizzy angst of young romance so well following Zuzu over decades as she navigates growing up is a heart-rending, funny and relatable journey -- Jessica Grose, author of Screaming on the Inside
Tender, wise, and thoroughly compelling, The Other Wife teems with the complicated pleasures and desolations of longing. Jackie Thomas-Kennedy knows a great deal about the life-shaping strength of desire. -- R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
Ive followed Jackie Thomas-Kennedys work since I first read striking stories she published in literary magazines. The Other Wife, her first novel, chronicles the shifting desires of a woman in her late thirties whos not sure shes made the right life choices. * Electric Lit, 48 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2025 *
A probing, gorgeous novel about the intricacies of desire: for other loves, other lives, other versions of the self. The Other Wife is a remarkable debut -- Kirstin Valdez Quade, author of THE FIVE WOUNDS and NIGHT AT THE FIESTAS
Humor! Verve! Soul! This novel has it all. In a moment where much literary fiction can sound and feel the same, The Other Wife sounds and feels both classic and like nothing I've encountered before -- Emma Copley Eisenberg, nationally bestselling author of HOUSEMATES

Author Bio

Jackie Thomas-Kennedy has been awarded a highly prestigious Stegner Fellowship and two MacDowell fellowships for her writing, as well as fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Yaddo. She is the winner of the 2019 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize. Her work has been recorded for NPR's Selected Shorts, and her stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, One Story, and Electric Literature, amongst others.