The Passionate Sister
John Thorndike
COMING SEPTEMBER 15, 2025
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In real life Virginia Thorndike, the author’s mother, died of an alcohol and drug overdose at the age of 57. In this novel she recovers and fights to stay sober. She devotes herself to her sons, hoping to make up for the years in which she gave them too little attention. Both now need her help. Her older gay son’s partner develops Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and her younger son’s wife succumbs to “the weakness,” her family’s term for schizophrenia. Ginny devotes herself to her boys, but also grows intimate with Lyle, her first lover in years. Growing older, there’s a surprise at every turn.
Paperback ISBN: 979-8-9926682-1-6
Ebook ISBN: 979-8-9926682-2-3
Audio book ISBN: 979-8-9926682-3-0
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Acclaim for The World Against Her Skin by John Thorndike
"It's a sad fact of life that there are some secrets too messy and toxic for mothers to tell their sons. With pull-no-punches storytelling, John Thorndike honors his mother by imagining those secrets."
—Rebecca Coffey, author of Hysterical: Anna Freud's Story
An "incredibly compelling book."
—The US Review of Books
"John Thorndike is scary. He writes about things other writers don't even want to think about, and does so in an understated, elegant prose that creeps up on a body and makes a mind go places it would otherwise avoid. In The World Against Her Skin, he takes us into his mother's addictions and sexuality, and treats those delicate subjects with insight and tenderness."
—Paul Kafka-Gibbons, author of Love. Enter and Dupont Circle
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"A rousing portrait of a brave, imperfect woman.... A stunning drama that delves into one woman's bid for romantic satisfaction, even at the price of desolation."
—BookLife
"This is a hard story beautifully told. Thorndike recreates his mother's life, adding tales of his own. How he loves her, with all her faults. Following her separation from both husband and lover, Virginia Thorndike falls apart and recovers, again and again. I knew this was going to end badly, but could not stop reading."
—Natalie Goldberg, author of Three Simple Lines, Wild Mind and Old Friend From Far Away
Winner of the 2023 Peace Corps Writers Maria Thomas Award for Best Fiction
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Author John Thorndike
John Thorndike grew up in New England, graduated from Harvard, took an MA from Columbia, then lit out for Latin America. He spent two years in the Peace Corps in El Salvador and two, with his wife and child, on a back-country farm in Chile. Eventually he settled with his son in Athens, Ohio, where for ten years his day job was farming. Then it was construction. His first two books were novels, followed by a memoir, Another Way Home, about his wife’s schizophrenia and his life as a single parent. A second memoir, The Last of His Mind, describes his father’s year-long descent into Alzheimer’s. The Passionate Sister is a sequel to The World Against Her Skin, a son's novel.
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