"After being expelled from their ancestral home in a not-too-distant future, Silvia and her mother finally settle at the Morningside, a crumbling luxury tower in a place called Island City where Silvia's aunt Ena serves as the superintendent. Silvia feels unmoored in her new life because her mother has been so diligently secretive about their family's past, and because the once-vibrant city where she lives is now half-underwater. Silvia knows almost nothing about the place where she was born and spent her early years, nor does she fully understand why she and her mother had to leave. But in Ena there is an opening: a person willing to give the young girl glimpses into the folktales of her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit that is lacking in Silvia's lonely and impoverished reality. Enchanted by Ena's stories, Silvia begins seeing the world as full of magical possibilities and becomes obsessed with the mysterious older woman who lives in the penthouse of the Morningside ... Silvia's mission to unravel the truth about this woman's life, and her own haunted past, may end up costing her everything"--Dust jacket flap.
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