The Time Traveler's Wife is Audrey Niffenegger's first novel. Though twenty-five agents initially turned down the manuscript, the book ventured on to great success, selling over a million copies in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The debut novel has garnered several awards, including the British Book Award of 2006, and has reached the New York Times bestseller list, among others. Actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston started a bidding war among potential publishers by securing the film rights to the novel for their production company, Plan B, in 2003, before the book was published.

The Time Traveler's Wife chronicles the romance between Henry, a Chicago librarian who vanishes in and out of time, and Clare, an artist who first encounters him as a child. Despite its science-fiction premise, the novel is more about the love and longing, the joy and melancholy, between star-crossed soul mates. Niffenegger says the story was inspired by the love between her maternal grandparents. Her grandfather died young, and her grandmother, who lived another three decades, never remarried. As she explains in her biography on the website BookBrowse, "I wanted to write about a perfect marriage that is tested by something outside the control of the couple."

The resulting novel has charmed readers around the world and provided countless book clubs with fuel for passionate discussion. Judith Mass captured its appeal in her 2003 review for the Boston Globe: "Refreshingly, the novel portrays long-term commitment as something lively and exuberant rather than dutiful and staid, evoking both the comforts it brings us and the tribulations we learn to live with."