London, 2008. Nineteen-year-old Chani Kaufman is betrothed to Baruch Levy, a young man she’s seen only four times before their wedding day. All the cups of cold coffee and small talk with suitors have led up to this moment. But the happiness Chani and Baruch feel is outweighed by their anxiety about the realities of married life; about whether they will be able to have fewer children than Chani’s mother, who had eight; and about the frightening, unspeakable secrets of the wedding night.
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect; and to 15-year-old Bee, she is her best friend and, simply, Mom. Then Bernadette vanishes…
Evvie, Maggie, and Topher have known one another since college. Their friendship was something they swore would last forever. Now years have passed, the friends have drifted apart, and they never found the lives they wanted—the lives they dreamed of when they were young and everything seemed possible…
