Outside the Lines: A Memoir

A Tale of Love and Complexity

Outside the Lines is the poignant and intricate story of a secret love affair between two women set in the 1980s. Maddie, a photojournalist from an aristocratic New England family, is ten years older, married, and has two children, while the author, Helen, the daughter of Eastern European immigrants, is an attorney working at a public defender's office in Boston. Their paths cross in a writing workshop, where the narratives they craft reveal shared histories of family secrets and a deep, albeit perplexing, connection to the Holocaust.

As their bond intensifies, Maddie and Helen are forced to confront societal taboos, their own identities, and the fragile dynamics within their families. Their clandestine love unfolds in the shadow of homophobia, adding layers of conflict and concealment. The narrative takes a profound turn when a terminal illness emerges, reshaping the relationships between the two women and their families in unexpected ways. With wit and sensitivity, and in her beautiful style, Fremont delves into the complexities of love, identity, and the courage it takes to defy societal norms.

About the Author

Helen Fremont is the author of the national bestselling memoir After Long Silence. Her second memoir, The Escape Artist, was selected as an "Editor's Choice" by the New York Times. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The New York Times, Ploughshares, and The Harvard Review. She has been a teaching fellow at both Bread Load and the Radcliffe Institute. She was a Scholar in the Women's Studies Research Center Scholars Program at Brandeis University, and worked as a public defender in Boston, where she now lives with her wife.

Praise for Outside the Lines

"The intersection of heartbreak and humor: that’s the sweet spot that Helen Fremont nails with such devastating effect."
—Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls and the North Bath Trilogy

"Over four heartrending, transformative years, Helen Fremont lives through all the big questions—love, family, art, caretaking, death, self-knowledge—as an impossible situation just keeps getting more impossible. Where there are no answers and no solutions, Fremont offers tenderness, self-deprecating humor, wisdom, and most powerfully, a deep and abiding love that honors not just Maddie, but the power of seeing and being seen by our own beloveds."
—Caitlin Horrocks, author of Life Among the Terranauts and The Vexations

"Helen Fremont has written a rich, moving story of coming out: as a lesbian in the conservative 1980s; as a daughter starting to resist parental demands; and as a woman learning the complexities of intimacy and mortality."
—Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland and Constructing a Nervous System

"...an atypical story of responsibility, ambition, and love."
—Debra Spark, author of Discipline and Breaking Bread

“By turns deeply funny and deeply sad, Helen Fremont has written a moving and engrossing love story.”
—Helen Epstein, author of The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma

"In Outside the Lines best-selling memoirist Helen Fremont delivers a profound history lesson as she deftly weaves the many ways the past confines our ability to love in the present... I felt I had entered a new genre of memoir, one filled with sizzling passion and need as queer bodies discover real desire for the first time. Fremont makes us look back at our own histories and gives us all the permission to forgive ourselves for not knowing how to love but doing it anyway."
—P. Carl, author of Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition