American journalist Helen Rowland is credited with stating that “when two people decide to get a divorce, it isn't a sign that they ‘don't understand’ one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.”

In Belle Burden’s memoir about her 20-year marriage and devastating divorce, it is actually both: a sign that she didn’t understand her husband and the dawning of that understanding. STRANGERS shares Burden’s life with her now ex-husband, James, and her working to come to terms with his leaving. It is an honest, raw and poignant look at partnership and loss.

"Burden is forthright and sincere about her responses, thoughts and feelings, and STRANGERS is written with candor and emotional control."

Burden and James met at work. She was a young lawyer, and he was starting a successful career in investment management. She was not interested in him at first; he was too physically similar to her father and had a type of prep-school privilege too familiar to her to be compelling. But romance developed, and she fell in love.

In STRANGERS, one reads Burden’s tale of her courtship and marriage through the lens of infidelity, heartache and divorce. Therefore, red flags abound for readers, even if they didn’t for Burden in real time. Her account of their marriage, until the very end, is of a strong union. After their son is born, Burden became a stay-at-home mother while doing some important pro bono law work in the realm of immigration. After their two daughters were born, her days were even more focused on parenting while James worked more and more. Burden saw his commitment to his career as a way of supporting the family, even when he was home less over time.

It was a shock to Burden when she received a phone call from the man whose wife James was having an affair with. Instead of asking for forgiveness or even offering much in the way of an explanation, James left. He didn’t want their family homes or even to be a co-parent. Thus began Burden’s mourning and grief for her marriage, as well as her new life as a single woman and mother. To add even more complexity to this situation, the split began during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Burden is forthright and sincere about her responses, thoughts and feelings, and STRANGERS is written with candor and emotional control. She notes that writing was her original life’s dream. This book and the published essay that preceded it are a return to that dream and a means of reclaiming what was once so important to her.

Burden comes from generational wealth and a family known for power, influence and style. James also was raised with plenty (though she shares that his family lost some of their financial security). Hers was and is a life of summer homes on Martha’s Vineyard, country clubs, private schools, original art and trust funds, which she readily acknowledges. This makes the reality of her situation very different from a majority of her readers and most women going through the end of a marriage.

Divorce is mundane in many ways, and Burden’s is no different. Still, she asks some important and thoughtful questions about relationships, and her story is engrossing due to the strength of her writing.