Thanks to her wealthy and well-connected family, twenty-six-year-old Marta is used to getting whatever she wants. And what she wants is a good time.

That is, until her father’s wife—the woman who raised her—becomes ill. Beautiful young Marta is forced to witness her unfaithful, brutish father abandon her adoptive mother in her final moments. After her father’s swift remarriage, Marta is surprised to discover that she is now the sole heir of her late mother’s sizeable estate. For the first time, she can choose to cut ties and establish her true self, apart from her parents, her social standing, and the complications of a life of excess. From the balmy beaches of Mexico to New York City, Marta searches for clues to her unconventional heritage and seeks to shed her family’s tradition of secrecy and betrayal as she finds her own way.

Lorea Canales is a lawyer, journalist, translator, and critically acclaimed novelist. One of the first Mexican women admitted to Georgetown Law, Canales worked in antitrust and electoral law in Washington, DC, and Mexico before joining the newspaper Reforma as a legal correspondent.

Since then, Canales has taught law at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, edited for the New York Times Syndicate in its Spanish news service, and worked for Felipe Calderón’s presidential campaign in Mexico.

In 2010, Canales received a master’s in creative writing from New York University. She published her novel Apenas Marta (Hardly Marta) in 2011 and Los perros (The Dogs) in 2013. Canales currently lives in New York.