Two women are drawn into a seductive web of privilege, displacement, sexuality, and other mysteries of the heart in this magnetic debut by a young Brazilian American author to watch.

With sharp, gorgeous prose, It Is Wood, It Is Stone takes place over the course of a year in São Paulo, Brazil, in which two women’s lives intersect.

Linda, an anxious and restless American, has moved with her husband, Dennis, for a year professorship. As Dennis submerges himself into his work, Linda finds herself unmoored and adrift, feeling increasingly disassociated from her own body. Linda’s unwavering and skilled maid, Marta, has more claim to Linda’s home than she can fathom. Marta, who is struggling to make sense of her country’s complicated history and its racial tensions, is exasperated by Linda’s instability. One day, Linda leaves home with a charismatic and beguiling artist, whom she joins on a fervent adventure that causes reverberations felt by everyone, and ultimately binds Marta and Linda in a profoundly human, and tender, way.

An exquisite debut novel by young Brazilian American author Gabriella Burnham, It is Wood, It is Stone is about women whose romantic and subversive entanglements reflect on class and colorism, sexuality, and complex, divisive histories.