Read the Book, Then Watch the Show — You’ll Be Shocked to Discover the Most Crucial Detail Was Quietly Changed in Sullivan’s Crossing… And the Ending Could Ignite a Fan Uproar

The hit television show ‘Sullivan’s Crossing’ is based off the book series of the same name by Robyn Carr

Sullivan’s Crossing knows how to bring the drama and the romance!

The romantic drama television series stars Morgan Kohan as Maggie Sullivan, a neurosurgeon who returns home to her small town of Sullivan’s Crossing after facing legal troubles with her career. While there, she reconnects with her estranged father, Harry “Sully” Sullivan (Scott Patterson).

As she gets reacquainted with small-town living, she starts to fall in love with her dad’s handyman, California “Cal” Jones (Chad Michael Murray). Throughout the first three seasons, Maggie and Cal go through plenty of ups and downs, with the fate of their relationship in the balance after the season 3 finale.

In addition to the three main characters, the TV series also stars Tom Jackson as Frank Cranebear. Andrea Menard as Edna Cranebear, Lindura as Sydney Shandon, Amalia Williamson as Lola Gunderson and Lauren Hammersley as Connie Boyle.

The TV series, which first premiered on CTV in 2023, is adapted from Robyn Carr’s best-selling book series of the same name. While the show is loosely based on the five-book series, the showrunners took creative liberty and changed different aspects to create more tension and drama.

Here’s a look at some of the differences between the book and the adaptation.

Sullivan’s Crossing is located in Colorado in the books

One of the most significant changes between the books and the television adaptation is the location of Sullivan’s Crossing itself.

In the TV series, the show takes place in the fictional town of Timberlake in Nova Scotia, Canada. Within the small town lies the Sullivan family’s campground, Sullivan’s Crossing. While Timberlake and Sullivan’s Crossing are not real, the show was filmed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the East Coast of Canada, according to Tudum.

Meanwhile, in the book, Carr set Sullivan’s Crossing in the Rocky Mountains, at the crossroads of the Colorado and Continental Divide, “where where campers and hikers, bikers, rock climbers, fishermen and nature lovers refuel, refresh and recharge,” per the novel’s description.

The Sullivan’s Crossing showrunner, Roma Roth, explained that they changed the setting in the show, because they didn’t want it to look too similar to Virgin River, another hit TV show inspired by Carr’s novels.

“To ensure the show would feel distinctive from her [Carr’s] other adaptation, I decided to set it in Nova Scotia for Nova Scotia,” Roth told Variety in 2022. “This meant diverging from the books slightly; however, having been born and raised in Canada it’s always been a personal goal of mine to create and write a Canadian content show that would reach a global audience.”

Maggie and Cal were always together in the books

In the television adaptation, Maggie Sullivan arrives at Sullivan’s Crossing to find newcomer Cal Jones helping her dad, Harry “Sully” Sullivan, with his campground. Although Maggie seems intrigued by Cal, she’s planning on only briefly staying there while her legal troubles play out back in Boston. In addition, she’s also still in a serious relationship with her Boston doctor boyfriend, Andrew Matthews (Allan Hawco).

The love triangle takes center stage in the first season of Sullivan’s Crossing. Andrew visits Maggie at Sullivan’s Crossing, later proposes to her and gets into a fight with Cal over his feelings towards Maggie. After breaking up and getting back together, Maggie discovers that she is pregnant with Andrew’s child but later miscarries.

In addition to the messy love triangle, Maggie and Cal continue to have their ups and downs with their relationship over the three seasons — including a secret marriage, Maggie’s uncertain future and Cal’s personal struggles. The TV series took a more delayed approach to their love story and highlighted their tension and slow-burn, rather than immediately diving into their romance.

However, Carr’s first novel in the Sullivan’s Crossing series, titled What We Find, takes a much less dramatic approach. Unlike the show, Carr places Maggie and Cal in a relationship almost instantaneously. Although Andrew exists in the books, he broke up with Maggie before she moved to Sullivan’s Crossing because of her legal woes. Similar to the series, Maggie suffered a miscarriage with her and Andrew’s child, but it happened earlier on and before she ventured to Sullivan’s Crossing.

The first book also depicts Maggie and Cal’s relationship in a less dramatic fashion and focuses more on their love for each other than their drama, while the TV show doesn’t depict Maggie and Cal as a solid couple until the third season.

By Carr’s second book, titled Any Day Now, Maggie and Cal are married and parents to a daughter named Elizabeth. Throughout the following three books, Maggie and Cal remain together and act as a voice of reason for other couples.

The characters of Connie and Sydney are different in the books

While some of the characters adapt different characteristics or jobs in the TV series, Sydney Shandon and Connie Boyle are two of the main characters who underwent major changes.

In the TV show, Sydney (Lindura) is Maggie’s childhood best friend who returns to Sullivan’s Crossing after trying to make it as a model in New York City. She came home after her brother Rob’s wife died, so she could care for him and his son.

Meanwhile, Sydney is most notably featured in the third book, The Family Gathering, as a local bartender and Cal’s younger brother Dakota Jones’ love interest. Similar to how the series portrayed her, Sidney returned home to help her widowed brother.

However, the book gave Sydney a different background and described her as a genius scientist who was working at a technology company. In addition, Sydney is also recovering from a tumultuous divorce after she discovered that her husband had been cheating on her.

Another character who drastically differs from the book to the show is Connie Boyle.

In the book series, Connie is a male character named Conrad “Connie” Boyle. Connie is a firefighter and EMT who is primarily featured in the second book, Any Day Now. Connie is coming to terms with his ex-fiancée cheating on him when he meets Cal’s sister, Sierra Jones. The second book follows Sierra and Connie’s love story as they each work out their troubling pasts.

However, in the television show, Connie Boyle is a woman. She is also a firefighter but is reeling from a divorce from her husband, Tom Canaday (Hugh Thompson). She has a close relationship with her teenage son, Jackson (T. Thomason) and also engages in a romantic relationship with a hunky hairdresser in town.

The book series follows different characters’ love stories — not just Maggie and Cal

Carr’s Sullivan’s Crossing series consists of five books: What We Find (2016), Any Day Now (2017), The Family Gathering (2018), The Best of Us (2019) and The Country Guest House (2020).

While the first book follows Maggie and Cal’s love story, the following four books focus on other people’s love stories. Any Day Now follows Cal’s sister Sierra as she falls in love with Conrad “Connie” Boyle. Meanwhile, The Family Gathering also highlights a Jones sibling, as it focuses on Cal’s brother, Dakota Jones’ story with Sydney. While the fourth Jones sibling, Sedona, is included in the novels, she is not prominently featured.

The Best of Us tells the love story of Dr. Leigh Culver and Rob Shandon, while the final novel, The Country Guest House, follows Hannah Russell and Owen Abrams.

Although Maggie and Cal’s characters remain constant throughout all five books, they aren’t the main characters.

The first three seasons of the show showcased other relationships and couples, but the story primarily focuses on Maggie and Cal’s romance. While the plot for the fourth season has not been released, the season 3 finale teases that their relationship will continue to take center stage.

Maggie and Sully aren’t as estranged in the books

In the book, Maggie and Sully aren’t as close as they could be, but they aren’t completely estranged. Maggie explains that her mom, Phoebe, moved Maggie from Sullivan’s Crossing to Chicago when she was a child, so she didn’t see her dad as much as she would have liked.

However, by the time she turned 11 years old, Maggie visited her dad for weekends and months at a time and “lived” for seeing her dad in Colorado. When it came time to choose her college, Maggie purposely attended a school in Denver, so she could be closer to her dad.

Although Maggie admitted in the book that she wished her dad had fought to see her more or keep her near her, she had come to terms with the fact that Sully believed he was doing what was best for her.

In the TV series, Maggie and Sully’s relationship is more estranged, as she hasn’t visited him since she was 15 years old. Unlike the book, Maggie went to Boston to study neurology and didn’t keep in touch with her father. Throughout the series, the two struggle to reconnect and frequently get into arguments over their past.