A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school to the quiet Pennsylvania home where a woman can live without her past.

Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agns, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raisedthe place that Fabienne helped Agns escape ten years ago. Now Agns is free to tell her story.

As children in a war-ravaged backwater town, theyd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselvesuntil Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agns on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.

Winner of the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.Long-listed for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie. Medal for Excellence in Fiction.