The luminous new novel from the author of The Margot Affair, about the secrets and shifting boundaries of a friendship between two women, worlds apart, at a tumultuous time in history

The Argentine Embassy, Tokyo, 1983. When Asa, a Japanese translator, finds herself seated next to Maricel, a charismatic Argentine woman, at a dinner, she is not expecting to meet the person who will change the course of her life. They form an immediate bond and Maricel invites Asa to visit her in Buenos Aires, where she lives with her teenage daughter.

Asa arrives in Argentina as the country emerges from a violent authoritarian regime. She embeds herself in Maricel’s world—deepening their connection and uncovering secrets about her past. Maricel’s husband, Edu, was disappeared during the military dictatorship in 1976, and she herself was imprisoned until 1982. For Asa, Maricel’s struggles seem so much greater than her own, and yet she seems so much stronger for them. As she grows closer to Maricel, Asa increasingly longs for a life other than her own.

Morning Child is a luminous exploration of the transformative power of friendship in a world of vanishings, and the search to shape a life amid tumultuous times. Charting Asa’s journey—a woman caught between cultures, far from one’s own country, and between languages and identities—as she strives to find her own defining moment, it is a moving testament to the stories we tell about ourselves and how they keep and sustain us.