It Is Wood, It Is Stone A Novel

With sharp, gorgeous prose, It Is Wood, It Is Stone takes place over the course of a year in São Paulo, Brazil in which three 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 meets Celia, a charismatic and beguiling artist, who she joins on a life-altering adventure that causes reverberations felt by them all. An exquisite debut novel by young Brazilian-American Gabriella Burnham about women whose romantic and subversive entanglements reflect on class and colourism, sexuality, and complex, divisive histories.