Reese Witherspoon Ventures into Thriller Writing with Debut Novel

On October 12, 2025, actress Reese Witherspoon kicked off the book tour for her debut novel, "Gone Before Goodbye," in Los Angeles. Witherspoon co-wrote the thriller with bestselling author Harlan Coben, and the pair presented the story at Shine Away, a two-day summit hosted by Witherspoon's media company, Hello Sunshine.

The novel follows Maggie McCabe, an Army combat surgeon who becomes embroiled in the world of Russian billionaires and private medicine. Witherspoon explained that she had been developing the idea for over two years but was unsure how to approach writing a book. After meeting Coben years earlier, she reached out to him to collaborate on the project.

Witherspoon revealed that the Maggie character was inspired by her own family, as her father was a doctor and her mother was a nurse, both of whom served in the military. "The first five years of my life I lived on a military base in Germany and everybody who filtered in and out of our house was another doctor, and all they would talk about was medical jargon," she recalled.

The actress hopes the book will inspire young girls to pursue careers in medicine, much like her character Elle Woods did for aspiring lawyers in the "Legally Blonde" films. "To make as many little girls as possible want to be surgeons, as Elle Woods [of Legally Blonde] did for lawyers. That would be cool. So that's probably the measure for my success: med school rates going way up," Witherspoon said.