Catherine Lacey Books in Order

Without telling her husband, Elyria leaves Manhattan for New Zealand and drifts through encounters with strangers. Hitchhiking and sleeping outdoors, she struggles with grief over her sister's death and the instability of her own identity.

Burdened by illness and debt, Mary Parsons takes an unusual job in a wealthy actor's experiment to engineer romantic relationships. As his designated Emotional Girlfriend, she enters a system that blurs employment, intimacy, and control.

These stories follow people struggling with grief, loneliness, failed relationships, and strained family ties. Encounters with strangers and unexpected reminders of the past interrupt their efforts to start over, revealing how difficult it can be to accept change.

A silent stranger of uncertain age, race, and gender is discovered sleeping in a Southern church. Named Pew by the congregation, the newcomer receives confessions and suspicion as the town prepares for its Forgiveness Festival.

Following the death of her wife, the enigmatic artist X, C. M. begins writing a biography. Her investigation crosses an alternative American history, revealing unknown origins and unsettling questions about the person she believed she knew.

After a breakup, Catherine Lacey examines depression, friendship, religious belief, and the wreckage of a shared life. Combining memoir and fiction in a book readable from either side, she considers how faith and storytelling can sustain people through loss.