“A beautiful portrait of a woman living a double life, torn between motherhood and ambition.” —Good Housekeeping

The story of a woman divided between love and selfhood and of the family left to reckon with her choices

Twins Viola and Sebastian have grown up without a mother. Ever since Susan died, she’s existed in fragments, and in the way their father, Al. She was a loving wife. She dabbled in acting. What else is there for her children to know?

The truth is, Susan was a successful soap opera star. When she met Al, a practical professor committed to his work in New England, they fell hopelessly in love. But as Susan’s career drew her west, she began to build a world outside him. After the birth of their twins, Susan—determined to have it all—found herself constantly traveling between two versions of herself: the ambitious actress who had finally achieved her dream and the wife and mother who desperately loved the family waiting for her at home.

Years after Susan’s death, Sebastian and Viola remain shaped by her absence in different ways. And when a former costar of their mother’s reenters their lives, the twins begin to question the stories they have inherited about both of their parents—and to glimpse the complicated woman Susan was beyond the confines of motherhood.