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Washington, DC, 2019: Laura Preston is a reclusive artist at odds with her older sister, Beatrice, as their elegant, formidable mother slowly slides into dementia. When a stranger contacts Laura claiming to be her brother, who disappeared decades earlier when the family lived in Bangkok, she ignores Bea's warnings of a scam and flies to Thailand to see if it can be true. But meeting him in person leads to more questions than answers. Bangkok, 1972: Genevieve and Robert Preston live in a beautiful house behind a high wall, raising their three children with the help of a cadre of servants. In these unfamiliar surroundings, Genevieve strives to create a semblance of the life they would have had at home in the US--ballet and riding classes for the children, impeccable dinner parties, a meticulously kept home. But in truth, Robert works for American intelligence, Genevieve is entabgled in a passionate affair, and their serene household is vulnerable to unseen dangers in a rapidly changing world and a country they don't really understand. -- back cover

`Intelligent, thoughtful, resourceful' WASHINGTON POSTFilmmaking student Buddy Whyte never visited his mother's hometown while she was alive. But in a small town where even disparate voices agree that the past is best kept hidden from outsiders, will he actually learn the truth?

A gorgeously wrought exploration of who gets to tell the story of our lives, and who gets to inhabit that story with us' Jodi PicoultBen is the sole survivor of a crime that claims his mother and countless others.