A debut nov­el by the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed New York Times best­selling author of The Light of Days, fol­low­ing two very dif­fer­ent Jew­ish women in War­saw in the late 1930s as they unex­pect­ed­ly come togeth­er in their search for love, mean­ing, and a sense of home, and as they grap­ple with the storm clouds gath­er­ing around them

1938: Fan­ny Zelshin­sky is a sophis­ti­cat­ed, mod­ern daugh­ter of the city’s Jew­ish elite who wants noth­ing more than to be rec­og­nized as a legit­i­mate artist by her fam­i­ly, her rad­i­cal pro­fes­sor whom she idol­izes, and the world at large. And all while she won­ders if she is real­ly going to go through with her wed­ding.

Mean­while, Zosia Dror has left behind her small north­east­ern shtetl and reli­gious fam­i­ly in the wake of vio­lence. Part of a bud­ding youth move­ment that believes in social equal­i­ty and cre­at­ing a Jew­ish home­land, all she wants is to not get dis­tract­ed by the glitz and hub­bub of the city — or by the keen eyes of a cer­tain tall, hand­some com­rade.

When leg­endary artist Wan­da Petro­vsky — both a mem­ber of Zosia’s move­ment lead­er­ship and Fanny’s beloved pho­tog­ra­phy pro­fes­sor — goes miss­ing, the two young women are thrown togeth­er in the pur­suit of the elu­sive fire­brand. Is Wan­da sim­ply hid­ing, or is her dis­ap­pear­ance con­nect­ed to the rise in anti­se­mit­ic laws and uni­ver­si­ty prac­tices? Fan­ny and Zosia may be the most unlike­ly of allies, but they must bridge their dif­fer­ences to help some­one they both care for — and dodge the dan­ger mount­ing around them in the process.