Book Guru #1020 Dear Great Book Guru, I was at the Love Your Neighbor Project’s Porchfest last weekend. What fun! With twenty-two bands and close to a thousand people attending, the event was a huge success. While listening to one of my favorite bands - Hunt and Hughes - I overheard someone going on about a book she had just read - set on Martha’s Vineyard and in Manhattan, it was a tale of a fairytale marriage abruptly ended. Any thoughts? Porchfest Fan ................................ Dear Porchfest Fan, STRANGERS by Belle Burden is a fascinating memoir and literary mystery. Burden had been happily married twenty years to James, a very successful attorney when she learns he has been involved with a much younger woman and wants a divorce. The couple and their three young children were sheltering during Covid in their home on Martha’s Vineyard when this is revealed. The story itself is compelling as she tries to understand how they had once been so happy and now were strangers, but Burden’s family lineage brings this book to a different level of interest. She comes from immense wealth and is a descendant of a host of iconic figures such as John Jay, the first Supreme Court Justice, the Vanderbilts, and the Paleys, As she goes through the various stages of grief, she finds solace in work and her children, but she remains plagued by the realization she knew so little about this man with whom she had shared such happy moments. It’s a beautifully written “memoir of a marriage.” Highly recommended!