Best-Selling Author Freida McFadden Is Actually Sara Cohen

This Wednesday, author Freida McFadden, the prolific writer behind best-selling thrillers like the “Housemaid” series, many of which have been adapted for TV and film, revealed her real identity in an exclusive interview with USA Today.

And while you may think that Freida McFadden is the least Jewish pen name in existence, it seems that her real name couldn’t possibly get more Jewish. The author’s real name is Sara Cohen, basically the Jewish female version of John Smith, the name of the first Jewish matriarch (with a just slightly unorthodox spelling) and the most quintessentially Jewish last name of all.

Cohen told USA Today that she felt like she was “tired of people debating if I’m a real person or if I’m three men,” referencing theories that have been posited by internet sleuths. She added that while she used a pen name so that she could keep practicing medicine, the 45-year-old, who treats brain disorders, now only works as a doctor perhaps “once or twice a month.”

Cohen was raised in Midtown, Manhattan, with a psychiatrist father and a podiatrist mother, the daughter of two doctors who both instilled in her a love for books (her mother was a fan of thrillers and loves her daughter’s writing, even if she doesn’t always get it). She has one brother, a music producer. She met her husband, an engineer, in computer science class, and the two live in Boston. The couple has two teen children — a son and daughter. The Daily Mail identifies her father as the late Carl Cohen, who passed away in 2024. An obituary from his colleague uses the Passover song “Dayenu” to recount his many accomplishments in the field of psychiatry.

Cohen hasn’t shared whether she is Jewish or not — to be fair, she didn’t share too much more about her life than what was already known through her fair share of press interviews. Yet, we feel fairly certain that she is, at least in some way, Jewish — though there certainly are a few non-Jewish Cohens, like football player Tarik Cohen (not to mention the divisive trend among mostly non-Jews of using the surname as a first name).

And while knowing that her last name is Cohen makes her use of wigs feel a little, well, extra Jewish, the author assures us that it has nothing to do with religious observance. “I have no idea how to style my hair,” she explained to USA Today.