Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's 2017 literary debut, Harmless Like You, swivels its focus between an estranged mother and son struggling with personal dilemmas in timelines decades apart. Her follow-up, Starling Days, also shifts its third-person point of view from character to character, but this time the narrative concerns a wife and husband who find themselves embarking on separate but interconnected journeys.

Mina Umeda is a classicist who suffers from depression, which may in part have been triggered by the death of the beloved grandmother who raised her. Her husband Oscar grew up with his mother in the U.K., but now lives in New York with Mina. He works for his father's import business, though he feels odd about being employed by the parent who wasn't around for most of his childhood. After Mina is picked up by the police while standing on a bridge contemplating suicide, Oscar persuades...