In the tradition of Daphne du Maurier, Michelle Richmond, and Shari Lapena, comes the newest mystery thriller from Edgar Award–winning, bestselling author Carol Goodman—a twisty, chilling story set in a former Magdalen Laundry in Manhattan that explores today’s #MeToo complexities.
THE STRANGER BEHIND YOU by CAROL GOODMAN
Series: standalone
Publication date: July 6, 2021
Published by: William Morrow Paperbacks
Genre: thriller, suspense
SYNOPSIS
It’s taken Joan Lurie three years to write her article exposing a famous newspaper tycoon as a sexual predator. On the eve of its publication, she celebrates at a party thrown in her honor and is riding high…only to be brutally attacked as she is returning home late that night. Traumatized and suffering the effects of a concussion, she moves to a highly secure new apartment building in northern Manhattan called the Refuge. Safely sequestered away, she tries to begin writing a book that expands her much-lauded exposé.
At the Refuge, Joan encounters a frail 96-year-old woman who has been living in the building since the 1940s when it was a Magdalen Laundry and Refuge for Fallen Women. When Lillian first arrived, she was hiding out from the infamous Murder, Inc mobsters. As Lillian relates her story about the long-ago incriminating incident she witnessed that forced her into hiding, Joan recalls certain details of her own investigation.
The more Joan learns about Lillian and the fabled story of the Refuge, the more she realizes they may be linked to the book she is writing—and to her attacker that fateful night. As Joan starts to connect the clues and unravel decades worth of history, she must stay one step ahead of those who are desperate to make sure Joan never uncovers the final truth.
“The Stranger Behind You is a captivating exploration of sexual harassment, friendship, ambition, and how women join together to overcome trauma. It is as classic as it is timely, as heartbreaking as it is suspenseful. Stunning. I couldn’t put it down.” -- Danielle Trussoni, New York Times bestselling author of Angelology and The Ancestor
"Carol Goodman’s The Stranger Behind You is at once a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller, a powerful meditation on the deep bonds and power of female friendship, and a colorful glimpse of New York City old and new. In a twisting, mesmerizing story that is as beautifuly written as it is utterly propulsive, Goodman weaves a dream that blends the past and the present, takes us deep into the hearts and souls of her characters, and keeps us breathlessly turning the pages right to the shocking and poignant end. I absolutely loved this layered and moving novel!” -- Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of Confessions on the 7:45
"Carol Goodman is a superb writer, and she explores family and small-town dynamics in a way that's both suspenseful and touchingly real. The Sea of Lost Girls features a fascinating cast of characters, intriguing setting -- and enough shocking twists to leave you breathless. I loved it." -- Alison Gaylin, Edgar Award-winning author of Never Look Back, on The Sea of Lost Girls
“You can always call upon Carol Goodman when you need an atmospheric and twisting tale. Full of half-truths and vengeful ghosts of the past, The Night Visitors will inspire readers to linger long into the night.” -- Lori Rader-Day, Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author of Under a Dark Sky, on The Night Visitors
“Blends a perfect gothic premise...with modern mysterious twists....I couldn’t put it down but I didn’t want it to end.” -- Wendy Webb, bestselling author on The Night Visitors
“Foreboding and moody...As you’re pulled deeper into its crumbling corridors and gothic history, you’ll never guess where its true threats lie.” -- Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times-bestselling author of Bittersweet and June, on The Widow's House
A Conversation with Carol Goodman, author of
THE STRANGER BEHIND YOU
Q: What inspired THE STRANGER BEHIND YOU?
CG: There were a number of threads that began this book, but the moment that stands out was hearing Dr. Christine
Blasey Ford describe the “sequelae” of being sexually assaulted. I recognized the symptoms she described—anxiety,
claustrophobia, panic attacks—from my mother, who had been sexually assaulted when she was a teenager. I realized,
then, that my mother had suffered from these post-traumatic stress symptoms all her life. At the time, the news was
full of women coming forward with their own stories of sexual assault and harassment and it made me think of previous
generations who had these experiences but had no recourse or anyone they could really talk to about it. It made me
want to write something about a woman of another generation living with that aftermath and being “stuck” in that
awful moment alongside a story of contemporary women dealing with the aftermath of assault.
The second inspiration came when I read an article about Michelle Jones, the historian who researched the history of
women’s prisons and wrote about a Magdalen Laundry in Inwood, a neighborhood in Manhattan where my husband
lived for many years and my daughters live in today. I was shocked to learn that there had been Magdalen laundries in
this country and that all memory of the institution seemed to have vanished from the neighborhood. This seemed like
the same kind of erasure as my mother’s experience and it created the setting of the book—an apartment building in an
old Magdalen Refuge where my modern heroine would go seeking safety.
Q: What is your writing process? Do you come up with the plot first? And are you ever surprised by where the story
takes you?
CG: I usually begin with a character or a voice telling a story about something that’s happened to them. I follow that
voice until I know enough about the story to begin. I keep writing notes and thinking about what happens next, but I am
always surprised by where the writing takes me! I keep learning about the characters and story as I write. It often takes
me until the end of the first draft to know what happened. Then I have to go back and revise—often, many times—to
shape the novel to tell the story I want to tell.
Q: Did you conduct research for THE STRANGER BEHIND YOU? Did you learn anything while writing the book?
CG: Yes, lots! The first bit of research was learning about the Magdalen Refuge in Inwood. I read newspaper articles
about the Refuge, including some hair-raising accounts of escapes and riots. There isn’t a lot of documentation about
that particular Refuge, so I read about Magdalen Laundries in Ireland and the U.S. Because my character Lillian was
involved in organized crime in the 1940’s I also read about Murder Inc and other syndicates, and the Abe Reles “suicide”
at the Half Moon Hotel.
For the modern section of the book, I read newspaper accounts of how reporters investigate accusations of sexual
assault. While my reporter’s story is fictional, I wanted it to have the feel of the investigative reporting that goes into
exposing a sexual predator. I followed stories in the news (unfortunately there was never a shortage of those) and read
accounts such as Ronan Farrow’s book on his reporting of the Weinstein case. I also consulted friends with journalism
backgrounds to get a sense of how an investigation takes place.
Q: THE STRANGER BEHIND YOU tackles themes of revenge and resentment, while also addressing the #MeToo
movement and a culture of complicity. What were you hoping to accomplish by addressing such difficult themes?
CG: One of the themes I am constantly interested in is the effect of trauma on people’s lives, the long-lasting
consequences of that trauma, and whether it’s possible to ever overcome the legacy of trauma. What fascinates me is
that while many of the aftereffects—the sequelae—of trauma are similar, each individual processes and copes with that
trauma differently. It makes me wonder what enables one person to survive and lead a productive life, while another is
unable to move on. I read somewhere that one of the keys to recovery is being able to have the event that caused the
trauma acknowledged. To me that means that in order to heal, as an individual and as a society, we have to
acknowledge the cruelties and injustices that have been perpetrated in the past. As individuals, too, I think we need to
acknowledge our own complicity in the silencing of victims, whether by being blind to the abuses of power around us or
from an unwillingness to listen to the accounts of survivors of assault. It’s not easy for victims to tell their stories or for
the rest of us to listen to them, but I think it’s necessary. Again, I think of Christine Blasey Ford’s bravery in coming
forward and telling her story and how listening to her story enabled so many women to feel like they could tell their own
stories. I hope that when I address these difficult themes in my books I am opening the door to that kind of
conversation in my readers.
Q: THE STRANGER BEHIND YOU has a mobster storyline from the 1940s interwoven throughout the novel. What
inspired this historical element of the story?
CG: I grew up listening to my mother’s stories of living in Coney Island in 1941. She glimpsed legendary figures like the
Kiss of Death Girl and Abe Reles, the notorious Murder Inc assassin known as Kid Twist. When she got off the subway at
night a local mobster would walk her home to “make sure she was safe.” She didn’t worry that she would be hurt,
because she would never “go with” that kind; as long as she kept to the right side of the tracks she would be okay. It
made me wonder what would have happened if she had strayed over to the wrong side.
Q: THE STRANGER BEHIND YOU takes place in a former Magdalen Laundry in Manhattan. What significance does
setting play in the story?
CG: When I read about the Magdalen Laundry I was fascinated by the idea that such a place existed in northern
Manhattan. The building itself was described as quite grand—like a French Chateau—and I could imagine it being
transformed into a luxury apartment building called “The Refuge.” Just as the original use of the word “refuge” for a
woman’s prison was ironic, the modern use of the term to imply a place of safety would come to be ironic when my
characters were threatened there. On a larger scale, I think that often the institutions that were created to “protect”
women—both physical institutions like prisons, reformatories, and refuges, and cultural ones like marriage and
restrictive laws—ended up limiting women’s options and confining them to narrow roles. And I loved the idea of setting
the story in Inwood, a vibrant multi-cultural Manhattan neighborhood with a rich history, on the banks of the Hudson
River.
Q: In your behind the book essay, your write, “we can only find true refuge by knowing the truth.” Can you speak to
this idea?
CG: As I mention above, I’ve read—and I believe—that trauma can be overcome if the injustice that caused the trauma
is uncovered and acknowledged and justice is done. Often, though, there’s a conspiracy of silence around injustice,
especially around sexual assault. That silence makes it harder for survivors to talk about what happened to them and
creates an atmosphere of shame that perpetuates sexual assault and harassment.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from your book?
CG: I always hope my readers are absorbed enough by my story to forget their own troubles for a little while. For this
book, I hope they also reflect on all the stories they may not know, stories of our grandmothers, our mothers, our
sisters, our daughters, our friends. I hope this book encourages them to listen to those stories.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carol Goodman is the author of The Lake of Dead Languages, The Seduction of Water, which won the Hammett Prize, and The Widow's House, which won the Mary Higgins Clark Award. She is also the co-author, with her husband Lee Slonimsky, of the Watchtower fantasy trilogy. Her work has appeared in such journals as The Greensboro Review, Literal Latte, The Midwest Quarterly, and Other Voices. After graduation from Vassar College, where she majored in Latin, she taught Latin for several years in Austin, Texas. She then received an M.F.A. in fiction from the New School University. Goodman currently teaches literature and writing at The New School and SUNY New Paltz and lives with her family in the Hudson Valley.
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