t opens with an act of violence, morphs into one of the most tender-hearted novels published in recent years. Moira Dean is a writer in N.Y.C. in 1979 when she opens her apartment door to a rapist. She holds the secret deep within, but when she learns she is pregnant, her mission becomes protecting the child, whose patriarchy is uncertain. She finds a hiding place in the sanctity of marriage in the suburbs, and for the next sixteen years, she and her husband and child are immersed in her parents, her best friend, her in-laws, with no one carrying the knowledge of her secret child. But her life erupts with the re-appearance of the rapist, which landed her in jail with four women in a cell who became over time her life support.