From the prizewinning author of "Come Together, Fall Apart" comes a mesmerizingly beautiful first novel about family, home, loss, and forgiveness that more than fulfills the promise of her earlier work. Miraflores has never known her father, and until now, sheas never thought that he wanted to know her. Sheas long been aware that her mother had an affair with him while she was stationed with her then husband in Panama, and sheas always assumed that her pregnant mother came back to the United States alone with his consent. But when Miraflores returns to the Chicago suburb where she grew up, to care for her mother at a time of illness, she discovers that her mother and father had a greater love than she ever thought possible, and that her father had wanted her more than she could have ever imagined. In secret, Miraflores plots a trip to Panama, in search of the man whose love she hopes can heal her motheraand whose presence she believes can help her find the pieces of her own identity that she thought were irretrievably lost. What she finds is unexpected, exhilarating, and holds the power to change the course of her life completely. In gorgeous, shimmering prose, Cristina HenrA-quez delivers a triumphant and heartbreaking first novel: the story of a young woman reconciling an existence between two cultures and confronting a life of hardship with an endless capacity to learn, love, and forgive.