Goodman was raised a Conservative Jew [2] in Honolulu, Hawaii. She graduated from Punahou School in 1985. Goodman then went on to Harvard University, where she earned an A.B. degree and met her husband, David Karger. Both were regulars at Harvard Hillel, and prayed in Harvard Hillel Orthodox Minyan. They then went on to do graduate work at Stanford University, where Goodman earned a Ph.D. degree in English literature. [3] Her mother, the late Madeline Goodman, was a genetics and women's studies professor then assistant vice president at the University of Hawaii at Manoa for many years before moving on to Vanderbilt University in the 1990s [4]. Her father, Lenn E. Goodman, is a professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt. Goodman's younger sister, Paula Fraenkel, is an oncologist. Fraenkel's experience in research labs is one of the inspiratons for Goodman's 2006 novel Intuition.[5]

Goodman and Karger live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Karger is a researcher in computer science at MIT. They have four children, three boys and a girl. 2006

Novels

• The Family Markowitz (Farrar Straus & Giroux 1996; softcover Washington Square Press 1997) ISBN 0-374-15321-3, ISBN 0-671-01388-2
• Kaaterskill Falls (The Dial Press 1998; paperback Dial Press Trade Paperback 1999) ISBN 0-385-32389-1, ISBN 0-385-32390-5
• Paradise Park (The Dial Press 2001, Dial Press Trade Paperback 2002) ISBN 0-385-33416-8, ISBN 0-385-33418-4
• Intuition (The Dial Press 2006), ISBN 0-385-33612-8
• The Other Side of the Island (New York: Razorbill, 2008) ISBN 978-1-59514-196-5
• The Cookbook Collector (The Dial Press 2010) ISBN 978-0385340854

Short stories

• Total Immersion (Harper & Row 1989; paperback Dial Press Trade Paperback 1998) ISBN 0-06-015998-7, ISBN 0-385-33299-8
• "The Closet" 1997
• "La Vita Nuova" 2010