Dear Strangers Book

A lyrical and romantic story of love, fate and family

In the high desert of the American southwest during the summer of 1982, the Finley family is awaiting the arrival of the baby boy they're due to adopt. Oliver, just seven, is eager for another playmate to join him and his sister in their idyll of swimming pools, climbing trees, and playing tag. But one hot afternoon, Dr. Finley dies suddenly and everything changes. Mrs. Finley, newly widowed, decides she cannot proceed with the adoption alone.

Twenty-one years later, Oliver believes he has finally found the brother his family was meant to adopt. Along the way, he also finds Miranda, an eccentric, charming photographer whose subjects are consenting strangers in their own homes after dark. Oliver and Miranda's love story collides with catastrophe when their worlds intersect in ways they could never have predicted.

A luminous, moving portrait of grief and atone­ment, romance and longing, Dear Strangers unearths the possibilities of hope and renewal in the unexpected bonds forged with family and strangers alike.

Publishers Weekly

Mullins (The Rug Merchant) creates a thematically heavy but emotionally vacant web of connections in her second novel. For siblings Oliver and Mary, a series of tragedies defines their childhood. On the same day that a neighborhood girl dies, their pathologist father also dies suddenly, leaving their mother to abandon the adoption of what would be the family's third child. Twenty-one years later, Mary, a flight attendant, maintains a safe cruising altitude above the pain and loss that, to her, characterize life. Oliver, obsessed with finding his lost brother, helps grieving families memorialize loved ones by creating video tributes to their lives. Oliver's encounter with Miranda, a beautiful young photographer-artist, is the first of a series of interactions among strangers who might become something more. Mullins's novel is an extended exploration of similar connections made and missed, but the author is more focused on driving home her ideas than developing her characters, who come across as thematic functionaries. The emotional vacuum left in the wake of Mullins's dedication to her ideas makes this a difficult book to get into. (Feb.)