Sleeping with the Enemy (novel)

Sleeping with the Enemy is a novel written by Nancy Price and published in 1987. It served as the basis for the 1991 film Sleeping with the Enemy, starring Julia Roberts and Patrick Bergin,^[1] which was remade a number of times.

Sleeping with the Enemy

First edition cover
Author	Nancy Price
Language	English
Genre	Fiction
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Publication date	1987
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print
Pages	332
ISBN	0671629670
OCLC	1027660577
Dewey Decimal	813.54
LC Class	PS3566.R49

Plot

Sara Burney, an abused, submissive and battered wife whose daily goal has been to keep her brutish husband Martin from still more violent assaults. Presumed dead when she is swept overboard from a sailboat in Manhasset Bay, Sara seizes the opportunity to escape from her husband and begin a new life. She rides the bus from Boston to the small university town of Cedar Falls, Iowa, where she finds a job as caretaker to Dr. Hazel Channing, a professor who is recovering from an accident that has left her both mute and paralyzed. Sara (now known as Laura Pray) gradually edges into independence. She reads Henry James to Dr. Channing and awakes her to sprightly dialogue. She finds the strength and the wisdom to counsel another woman in crisis. And she begins a tentative but promising relationship with her next-door neighbor, a perceptive professor. But her desire to visit her mother in a nursing home enables her murderously psychotic husband to trace her.^[2]