A sweeping, unforgettable novel from The New York Times 
best-selling author of Maine, about the hope, sacrifice, and love between two sisters and the secret that drives them apart.

Nora and Theresa Flynn are twenty-one and seventeen when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she’s shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn’t sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan—a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand. Fifty years later, Nora is the matriarch of a big Catholic family with four grown children: John, a successful, if opportunistic, political consultant; Bridget, quietly preparing to have a baby with her girlfriend; Brian, at loose ends after a failed baseball career; and Patrick, Nora’s favorite, the beautiful boy who gives her no end of heartache. Estranged from her sister, Theresa is a cloistered nun, living in an abbey in rural Vermont. Until, after decades of silence, a sudden death forces Nora and Theresa to confront the choices they made so long ago. A graceful, supremely moving novel from one of our most beloved writers, Saints for All Occasions explores the fascinating, funny, and sometimes achingly sad ways a secret at the heart of one family both breaks them and binds them together.

PRAISE FOR saints for all occasions

“I hope to read another novel as strong and wise and beautiful and heartbreaking as J. Courtney Sullivan’s Saints for All Occasions this year, but I’m not sure I will.” 
—Richard Russo

“All of her books are worth reading, but Sullivan’s latest, about the divergent life paths of two Irish immigrant sisters, may be her very best.”
–Anna Quindlen

“Elegant. … Captivating. … Deft and insightful. … A quiet masterpiece…impressive… so unassuming that its artistry looks practically invisible. In a simple style that never commits a flutter of extravagance, Sullivan draws us into the lives of the Raffertys and in the rare miracle of fiction makes us care about them like they were our own family.” 
—The Washington Post, Best Books 2017

“Reminiscent of both Colm Toibin’s “Brooklyn” and Matthew Thomas’s “We Are Not Ourselves,” this enveloping novel follows a fraught Irish family through unimaginable trials. It introduces its two main characters as young sisters ready to emigrate from Ireland to America, and follows them through the rest of their lives. All of Sullivan’s characters leap off the page. You don’t read this book; you breathe it.” 
–Janet Maslin, The New York Times, Critic’s Picks 2017

“Fabulous and smart.”
 —Emma Straub, The New York Times

“Literature lost more than it realized when the Irish novelist Maeve Binchy died in 2012. Binchy specialized in intimate portraits of small-town life, and she suffused each of her novels with a benevolence that was almost maternal, always finding the best in her characters, however flawed: Few writers today can inspire the feeling of consolation that she so reliably provided. But one such kindred spirit is J. Courtney Sullivan, whose Irish-American family drama “Saints for All Occasions”  is touched with the same warmth, kindness and gentle wisdom.” 
–The Wall Street Journal

“Here to fill the Brooklyn-sized hole in your heart.” 
—Glamour, Best Books to Read in 2017

 “Sullivan’s assiduous layering of details brings her characters warmly to life.” 
—The Boston Globe

“Utterly unputdownable…A beautiful novel.” 
—Brenda Janowitz, PopSugar’s Hot New Books You’ll Want to Get Your Hands On

“A breathtaking literary ode to life, change, and the unbreakable bonds of family.” 
—Redbook

“Sullivan leaves us with a sense of bewilderment for the inner world of humans, in all their flaws, in all their holiness.” 
—Portland Press Herald

“An engrossing family drama…Sullivan’s profound understanding of her characters and the Irish-Catholic culture that defines them illuminates every scene.” 
—People 

“Of Catholic guilt, silences, and secrets: an expertly spun family drama, a genre Sullivan has staked out as her own…Sullivan is a master at making a sideways glance or a revealed detail add to a larger picture that she takes her time in building.” 
—Kirkus Reviews

“Sullivan has a gift for capturing complicated sibling dynamics, especially in a family ruled by Catholic repression…Sullivan’s quiet ending is a satisfying conclusion to this rich, well-crafted story.”
—Publishers Weekly

“On a terrible night in 2009, Nora Rafferty is woken with the news that her eldest son, Patrick, has died in a car crash, likely the result of his own drunken driving. In a haze of grief and rage, she telephones her long- estranged sister—a cloistered nun—and leaves a message informing her of his death. Sullivan’s fourth novel is a quietly devastating look at the power a secret, in this case the secret of Patrick himself, can wield over an entire family for generations. The story jumps through time, from the 1957 arrival of sisters Nora and Theresa Flynn from Ireland to the present, each part narrated by a different member of the family, elegantly woven together to form a more complete, if not quite intact, picture of how the consequences of choices made by Nora and Theresa 50 years earlier came to define not only the two of them but each of Nora’s now-grown children, who love and loathe their mother in equal measure. Sullivan once again expertly delivers a messy and complicated family story with sharp yet sympathetic writing.”
— Magan Szwarek, Booklist

Entertainment Weekly interviews J. Courtney Sullivan about Saints For All Occasions

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Photo by TJ Holowaychuk