Faithful: A Novel
![](https://alicehoffman.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Faithful_Alice-Hoffman-672x1024.jpg)
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Marriage of Opposites and The Dovekeepers comes a soul-searching story about a young woman struggling to redefine herself and the power of love, family, and fate.
Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt.
What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Faithful is the story of a survivor, filled with emotion—from dark suffering to true happiness—a moving portrait of a young woman finding her way in the modern world. A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. In New York City she finds a circle of lost and found souls—including an angel who’s been watching over her ever since that fateful icy night.
Here is a character you will fall in love with, so believable and real and endearing, that she captures both the ache of loneliness and the joy of finding yourself at last. For anyone who’s ever been a hurt teenager, for every mother of a daughter who has lost her way, Faithful is a roadmap.
Alice Hoffman’s “trademark alchemy” (USA TODAY) and her ability to write about the “delicate balance between the everyday world and the extraordinary” (WBUR) make this an unforgettable story. With beautifully crafted prose, Alice Hoffman spins hope from heartbreak in this profoundly moving novel.
Find the Reading Group Guide here
Praise
“…Shelby’s story is a fine, emotionally resonant portrait of loss and rebirth.”
—People
“It’s impossible not not to root for Shelby Richmond, the broken, goodhearted young woman at the center of Alice Hoffman’s poignant new novel, Faithful.”
—USA Today
“Deeply moving…She takes us deep into the human heart, and in a relatable story, deftly examines the healing process.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Bestselling author Alice Hoffman has done it again with her new novel, Faithful. Hoffman is an amazing storyteller who weaves us into the life of Shelby Richmond, an ordinary girl who becomes a remarkable young woman…There is that unique magic that Hoffman casts in all of her novels…Seriously, this is a novel for anyone who has faith.”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“This is a luminous book that sucks you in…Allow plenty of time if you pick up Hoffman’s latest; you might not be able to put it back down.”
—The Seattle Times
“I look forward to putting Faithful in the hands of my customers, and I’ll bet the farm that it will find a wide and admiring readership.”
—Mitchell Kaplan, Books & Books Miami
“By Faithful‘s last pages, you’ll have to release the breath you didn’t know you were holding…”
—Whitney Hu, Strand Bookstore
“I have loved every book Alice Hoffman has written. And now I’m weeping over the ending of Faithful. What a heart wrenching, beautiful novel.”
—Valerie Koehler, Blue Willow Bookshop