International bestselling author Marianne Fredriksson weaves transcendent stories of familial bonds, recovered history, and enduring love. With her acclaimed novels Hanna’s Daughters and Simon’s Family, Fredriksson captivated readers with the extraordinary power of her emotional landscapes. Now Fredriksson gives us Two Women, the unforgettable story of a remarkable friendship–and the secrets that threaten to tear it apart.
They meet on a spring day in the local garden center: Inge, a native Swede, lovely and refined, is a woman ruled by reason and her own deeply held moral beliefs; and Mira, a Chilean immigrant who still feels out of place in the cold Scandinavian north, has spent far too much of her life searching for life’s meaning.
Intrigued by one another, the two women are nevertheless wary of the great cultural differences that seem to separate their lives. Yet both are single mothers devoted to their children, and both find joy and comfort in cultivating plants and flowers–and so together, they begin to develop a close bond. Through many afternoons spent amongst the beauty of Inge’s garden, Mira slowly reveals the horrors of a shadowed past and the heartbreak involving her beloved daughter.
As Mira and her family begin a wrenching journey of discovery, Inge unwittingly uncovers secrets in her own life that make her question the very order of her world . . . and wonder whether the truth is really what any of them need to find–or if, in fact, it is the truth that will destroy them.
An elegant and moving novel of time and memory, love and distance, and the wounds they create and conceal, Two Women is Marianne Fredriksson’s most affecting work of fiction to date.
