In this spellbinding novel, an ordinary housewife becomes an unlikely spy--and her dark secrets will test even the most unbreakable ties. Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara's family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese...

Isa de Smit grew up in her parents' art gallery in Amsterdam, but in the middle of the war she survives by selling fake paintings to the Nazis while trying to help her friend, Truus, smuggle Jewish babies to safety--but in 1943 it is hard to know who to trust.