I thoroughly enjoyed this engrossing story of a mother and daughter trying to make sense of their relationships to each other while also trying to fit into the claustrophobic world created by a handful of other expatriates living in Ankara, Turkey. While the father …more disappears for months at a time on business, Canada, a young girl of twelve, learns to navigate the landscape of the city, broadening and moving away from the rarefied atmosphere of the adults who spend their time socializing, having affairs and drinking too much. While Canada strains to move away and blend into the Turkish landscape, Grace, her mother, struggles to ingratiate herself into the inner circle of wives left behind by their traveling husbands.

Told from both the mother and daughter's point of view, one gets a sense of how both are floundering to find their own place in this exotic world while growing apart from each other. As the plot develops, the cultural differences between East and West begin to alter the storyline and one can feel the characters being propelled to a tragic conclusion. Well developed female characters who are flawed yet deserving of sympathy in their ignorance and an interesting plot line made this novel well worth reading. I would definitely recommend this book. (less)