About the Author

MADDIE DAWSON lives in Connecticut. She is happily married.

Reviews

"[A] deceptively bouncing, ultimately wrenching novel [that] will grab you at page one....The phrase 'summer read' seems invented for this debut."
--"People
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"Nicely written...enjoyable prose and keen characterization."
--"Publishers Weekly"

"Both tender and exquisite, Maddie Dawson's triumphant debut, "The Stuff That Never Happened", is a pitch-perfect look into the choices we made in our past and the consequences that they carry long into the future. I loved every page."
--Allison Winn Scotch, "New York Times" bestselling author of "The One That I Want"
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""The Stuff That Never Happened" is unlike a lot of novels I read - I was never quite sure what was going to happen, and in that way, I found it compelling and compulsive to read. Often when I'm halfway through a book, I'm fairly certain of the characters' paths. This time, the lives encountered were surprising, illuminating, and always believable."
--Susan Straight, author of "A Million Nightingales"

"What a joy it is to discover Maddie Dawson. In the best storytelling tradition of writers like Elizabeth Berg and Anne Tyler, Dawson delivers a fast-paced, unflinching, often hilarious novel about the challenges of love, parenthood, and staying true to yourself in a marriage."
--Holly Robinson, author of "The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter: A Memoir"

"'I can admit that I went there hungry for the drama of him, that I craved that heightened sense of loving and being loved again, ' Maddie Dawson's middleaged heroine confesses. In trying to make sense of one married woman's relationship to her old flame, "The Stuff That Never Happened" is a paean to family happiness as much as romance."
--Stewart O'Nan, author of "Songs for the Missing"