Karolina Waclawiak’s ‘The Invaders’ picked up by ABC

Los Angeles-based author Karolina Waclawiak’s novel “The Invaders,” about a mother and son making their way through the wilds of affluent Connecticut suburbia, has been picked up by ABC.

Deadline reports that Ellen Fairey, whose TV credits include being a writer and producer on “Nurse Jackie,” is adapting Waclawiak’s book for television. ABC Studios-based Mandeville Films is producing the “dark, humorous soap.”

The book, published in July, tells the story of Cheryl, a 40-something second wife and her college age stepson, both outsiders in an exclusive coastal community in Connecticut riven by undercurrents of fear, hierarchy and precarious privilege.

“In many ways,” Waclawiak told the Los Angeles Times in May, “Cheryl is emblematic of what is possible and what is not. It’s a matter of control and who controls your life. In her world, women give up their agency for money. But once they give it up, they’re at the mercy of someone who can fall out of love with them. These woman come with an expiration date, but their husbands do not.”

Born in Poland, Waclawiak came to the United States with her family when she was 2 and grew up in Connecticut towns much like the one where “The Invaders” takes place. “We weren’t wealthy,” she told The Times’ David Ulin, “which led to an obsession with beaches, houses, country clubs.” Things that the people of privilege around her had.

“I like to throw my characters in a corner and to see what they can take,” Waclawiak told Ulin. “People are complicated; they act out of a variety of motivations. I think we do a disservice to readers if we don’t portray that, if we only write about characters in shades of black and white.”

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