Books Written by Wally Lamb

Seven novels, all covered on this page, from She’s Come Undone (1992) to The River Is Waiting (2025). He also edited two anthologies of writing by women at York Correctional Institution, Couldn’t Keep It to Myself (2003) and I’ll Fly Away (2007), which is why some lists say nine books. A third anthology, You Don’t Know Me, was announced for 2019 but never released.

She’s Come Undone (1992), I Know This Much Is True (1998), The Hour I First Believed (2008), Wishin’ and Hopin’ (2009), We Are Water (2013), I’ll Take You There (2016) and The River Is Waiting (2025). The edited anthologies came out in 2003 and 2007.

I Know This Much Is True (1998) is the one most often named as his best. It became a number-one bestseller after Oprah’s Book Club picked it, and it was adapted for HBO in 2020 with Mark Ruffalo as both twins. His debut, She’s Come Undone, is a close second in popularity.

With She’s Come Undone (1992): it stands alone, it is shorter than I Know This Much Is True, and it shows his first-person method at full length. If you want something brief first, Wishin’ and Hopin’ (2009) is his shortest book.

No, it is fiction, but it draws on his life. The novel follows Corby Ledbetter, who causes an accident that kills one of his two-year-old twin sons and goes to prison for involuntary manslaughter. Lamb has said “there are shards of me in Corby, but he and I are different people,” that Corby’s drinking is “based somewhat on personal experience”, and that the prison world comes partly from his twenty years at York Correctional Institution. He has named a Mexican folk tale, the Weeping Woman, as an inspiration; the Wequonnoc River in the title is invented.

He is not a twin; he grew up with older sisters and has said, “I always wanted a brother. That never happened.” He and his wife Christine have three sons. Twins appear in I Know This Much Is True (Dominick and Thomas Birdsey) and in The River Is Waiting (Corby’s sons). He has said he did not know Dominick had a twin brother when he began that novel; the twin emerged as he wrote.

He was born and grew up in Norwich, Connecticut, and taught for 25 years at Norwich Free Academy, his old school. Publishers Weekly reported in 2025 that he lives in Storrs, Connecticut, with his wife Christine, and writes in the basement of their house.

An American novelist and former high school English teacher, born on 17 October 1950 in Norwich, Connecticut, so he turns 76 in October 2026. He is alive and still writing. He published his first novel at 41 and has had three novels chosen for Oprah’s Book Club.

It is a 2003 collection of autobiographical essays by eleven women at York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Connecticut, written in the workshop Lamb led; he edited it and wrote its introduction. Most contributors describe abuse and poverty before prison. About a week before publication the State of Connecticut sued the writers for the cost of their imprisonment; after 60 Minutes covered the case the state settled. In 2019 two former participants complained they had not been paid for a planned third anthology; the programme was suspended, an investigation cleared Lamb, and the book was never published.

Yes. In March 2025 Publishers Weekly reported that he was already at work on his next novel, partly set during the First World War. No title or date has been announced.