A fresh and wit­ty debut about a young immi­grant moth­er and her increas­ing­ly inquis­i­tive daugh­ter, who wakes up one day and decides to find out who her father is.

Sonia is a Hun­gar­i­an immi­grant who is rais­ing her daugh­ter, Mila — her beloved Milosh — on her own in sun­ny Los Ange­les. Her days are a blur of not-quite-ille­gal busi­ness activ­i­ties, dodg­ing PTA moms, and bak­ing birth­day cakes laced with rum — minor mis­takes that nev­er­the­less con­tin­u­al­ly remind her of every­thing she doesn’t under­stand about Amer­i­ca and par­ent­hood. Mila, mean­while, is jug­gling vio­lin and swim­ming lessons and nav­i­gat­ing the treach­er­ous social pol­i­tics of school with the help of a less-than-help­ful guide­book on how to be cool in the sixth grade — all the while try­ing to get her secre­tive moth­er to share some­thing, any­thing, about her past.

Sonia is sure that their bond, stitched from dri­ve-through din­ners, extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties, and a lot of exas­per­at­ed affec­tion for each oth­er — will be enough to sat­is­fy her daugh­ter. But her guard­ed lifestyle has left Mila lone­ly, iso­lat­ed, and ready to write her­self into a big­ger sto­ry. When she stum­bles across emails between her moth­er and a man she’s nev­er met, Mila decides to take mat­ters into her own hands and forms a plan that will implode their care­ful­ly con­struct­ed lives.

Mov­ing between Budapest before the fall of the Berlin Wall; Wash­ing­ton, DC, in the tense years of the Cold War; and the bright sun­shine of ear­ly aughts Los Ange­les, Por­cu­pines is an irre­sistible nov­el about moth­ers and daugh­ters, secre­cy and lone­li­ness, belong­ing and rein­ven­tion — and what hap­pens when the truth can’t be held back any longer.