Firefly Lane
Kristin Hannah's Firefly Lane spans more than thirty years in the friendship between glamorous, ambitious Tully Hart and quiet, family centered Kate Mularkey, who become inseparable in 1974 on a country road in the Pacific Northwest. As teenagers they swear they will be best friends forever, and Hannah follows them through college at the University of Washington, the broadcast journalism boom of the 1980s, motherhood, marriage, betrayals large and small, and the kind of long silences that test whether any friendship can survive growing up. Tully becomes a celebrated television talk show host with no real family of her own, while Kate quietly builds the suburban life Tully publicly disdains, and the novel braids those two paths until a devastating diagnosis forces them to confront everything they have left unsaid. The book reads like the soundtrack of a generation of American women, with songs, fashion, and headlines anchoring each chapter.
Themes & atmosphere
Also by Kristin Hannah
All works by Kristin Hannah →
What you might want to know about Firefly Lane
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A shy 1970s teenager and the loud girl across the road become best friends on Firefly Lane. The novel follows them across thirty years of TV news careers, husbands, and a fight that nearly ends them.
Yes. Netflix produced two seasons of Firefly Lane in 2021 and 2023, starring Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke. The show adapts both the original novel and its sequel, Fly Away.
Yes. Kristin Hannah wrote a sequel, Fly Away (2013), continuing the story of Tully and Kate. The two books form a duology.
Firefly Lane was written by Kristin Hannah, published in 2008 by Suma.
Firefly Lane is 528 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Firefly Lane takes most readers 8 to 11 hours to finish.
Firefly Lane is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.