In 2017, Sullivan wrote the foreword to a new edition of one of her childhood favorites, Anne of Green Gables, published by Penguin Classics.

[7] In 2011, Oprah's Book Club included Commencement in a list of "5 Feminist Classics to (Re)read as a Mom, Wife and Writer".

[8] Sullivan's second novel, Maine, deals with four women from three different generations of an Irish family named the Kellehers.

The foursome includes: Alice, the stubborn and opinionated matriarch who is dealing with the guilt she has over a tragedy in the past; Ann Marie, who married into the family and is nursing her newfound love for creating dollhouses; Katherine, Alice's eldest daughter who has commuted from California to be with her daughter, Maggie; and Maggie, a kindhearted 32-year-old from New York who is dealing with her pregnancy.

As these lives and marriages unfold in surprising ways, we meet Frances Gerety, a young advertising copywriter in 1947.

Frances is working on the De Beers campaign and she needs a signature line, so, one night before bed, she scribbles a phrase on a scrap of paper: "A Diamond Is Forever."

Richard Russo said, "I hope to read another novel as strong and wise and beautiful and heartbreaking as Saints For All Occasions this year, but I'm not sure I will."