Two Women: A Novel of Friendship (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

With her acclaimed novels Hanna’sDaughters and Simon’sFamily, international bestselling author Marianne 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, 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. Through many shared afternoons in 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. An elegant 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.