Bestselling Author Freida McFadden Reveals Her True Identity

Could bestselling author Freida McFadden be Jewish?  That’s the question fans are asking ever since the prolific thriller writer revealed last week her true identity. She really is Dr. Sara Cohen, a physician near Boston.

It’s like a Freida McFadden mystery novel come to life.  McFadden has appeared a few times in public at literary events, always with a sleek blond bob.  Often, she dons oversized glasses too.  Good chance that was a disguise: the blond hair is a wig, hiding her curly brown hair.  (For a while, McFadden/Cohen even wrote a blog about being a doctor: she titled it “Frizzy.”)

The name “Freida” was an invention: coined from the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database, a program that helps medical students match with hospital placements.  The author chose “McFadden” because she thought it was “a little humorous sounding.”

Attempting to guard her real identity, McFadden/Cohen has never participated on book tours.  Her few public appearances have been carefully managed literary events and online interviews, where the famed author seemed guarded and appeared in disguise.

Unveiling a Double Life

Unbeknownst to her millions of fans, while she was writing over two dozen bestsellers, including The Housemaid, which was adapted into a blockbuster movie, McFadden/Cohen was also working as a doctor specializing in brain injuries.  It wasn’t easy to juggle two demanding careers; in a January 2025 interview, she disclosed that she’d spent a recent morning treating patients in the hospital where she works, then came home to spend a busy afternoon writing.

“At work, I want to be a doctor,” she explained.  “A lot of my books have medical stuff in them, and I don’t want people saying, ‘Is this based on me?’  It feels unprofessional.’”  Recently, however, a colleague at her hospital recognized her from one of her book jackets and the secret began to spill out.  McFadden/Cohen also cut back on the hours she works as a physician, freeing up more time for writing.

On April 8, 2026, she finally went public with her real name, telling USA Today “I’m at a point in my career when I’m tired of this being a secret.”

She also provided a few key facts about her life, piquing the curiosity of some Jewish readers wondering if their favorite author is in fact Jewish. McFadden/Cohen grew up in New York City and attended Harvard University, where she majored in Math and met her husband Ian Weiner, an engineer.  Her parents are both medical professionals: her father was Dr. Carl Cohen, a psychiatrist who passed away in 2004, and her mother is Dr. Ellen Sobel, a podiatrist.  Her brother is a music producer named Zack Cohen.

After attending medical school at SUNY Stony Brook, she worked as a resident in California, before moving to the Boston area with her husband.  While she pursued medicine, she also engaged in her hobby of writing, sending manuscripts to publishers under a pseudonym.  She self-published her first book, a thinly-veiled book about her life as a doctor called The Devil Wears Scrubs.  As her mysteries became more and more popular, she found herself working with colleagues who were big fans of her work and had no idea that she was Freida McFadden.

Sara and Ian live outside Boston with their two children and the family cat.  Given all the very Jewish-sounding names in her family - and the fact that medicine and engineering are fields with many Jews - some are speculating about the author’s ethnicity.

“Yes, bestselling thriller author Frieda McFadden is Jewish,” Google’s AI confidently declared when I asked it, though the only “evidence” it offered was her Jewish-sounding name. Freida McFadden’s official website and Facebook page don’t say anything about her religion.  The only reference to anything remotely Jewish related seems to be Israel: soon after Hamas’ brutal October 7, 2023 attack on Israel she allowed her official Facebook page to be tagged in some pro-Israel posts.

Erasing Jewish Authors

Whether or not Dr. Sara Cohen is indeed Jewish, given her Jewish-sounding name, adopting a pseudonym as an author was a smart move.  In recent years, much of the publishing world has been turning against Jewish authors.

After Hamas’ 2023 attack, the New York Times noted that “a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jewish from full participation unless they denounce Israel.” Jewish authors have found themselves sidelined, even when their work has nothing to do with Israel.  A viral post titled “Is your fav author a Zionist?” identified hundreds of Jewish authors, advising readers to boycott their books.  (The site is still live, currently listing what appears to be thousands of authors.)

“Jewish writers were being dropped, disinvited, and sidelined,” noted Rina Cohen, who helps combat antisemitism in New York, and has worked to aid Jewish authors.  Journalist Gil Troy calls this subtle but noticeable turn away from Jewish writers a “subtle boycott,” noting that “much of the publishing world has turned hostile to Jews.”

Jewish authors tackling a range of issues, including thrillers like McFadden/Cohen writes, have found themselves dropped by literary agents and turned down by publishers. “Writers giving off a whiff of Zionism or appreciation for Western civilization often find themselves canceled,” notes Troy.  “Equally devastating is the silent boycott, the quiet killer that has many well-known authors with great manuscripts muscled out, unable to get publishing contracts with no real reason given, even before colleagues start banning their works.”

Perhaps it was this subtle, pervasive hostility which sparked Dr. Sara Cohen’s decision to adopt a perky, all-American, decidedly non-Jewish sounding nom de plume. “Even though I haven’t told my real name until now,” Cohen notes, “I feel like I have shared the real me all along and everything I’ve told (fans) has been the truth.  Even though the name will be a surprise, nothing else will.  I’ve always been genuine with my readers.”

Whether McFadden/Cohen is indeed Jewish or not, this bestselling writer now will be known by her extremely Jewish-sounding name.  It will be interesting to see if revealing her true identity affects her popularity.