The novel churns through a lot of exposition and logistics before racing to a satisfactory payoff.
Maia’s interview with the dying Beatriz reveals additional startling clues about her lineage.
Against a backdrop of the Great Depression and the building of Rio’s giant statue of Christ, a tangled tale unspools of Bel’s affair with a Parisian sculptor, of Gustavo’s despair and forgiveness, and of Beatriz, the child of dubious parentage born to them. The Cabrals need the Bonifacio money, and the Bonifacios need the Cabrals’ social cachet. In 1927, Maia’s great-grandmother Izabela “Bel” Bonifacio, the daughter of a wealthy Italian coffee grower, is betrothed to Gustavo Cabral, scion of one of Rio’s most aristocratic Portuguese families. A mammoth flashback comprises the bulk of the book. The clues provided by Pa Salt-a moonstone necklace, a set of coordinates, and a triangular stone tile-lead Maia to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro the sole inhabitants, an old woman named Senhora Carvalho and her maid, Yara, are initially suspicious but relent when they note a family resemblance. Pa Salt left a will providing all his daughters with the means to pursue their wildly divergent paths but with specific instructions that each investigate her origin. The eldest, Maia-each daughter is named for a star in the Seven Sisters cluster, though a seventh sister never arrived-is the only one who hasn't left the nest: she works from home as a translator. When word comes of the death of the seafaring adoptive father they fondly called Pa Salt, his six daughters gather at Atlantis, the estate on Lake Geneva where they grew up. Launch of a projected series about six sisters who were adopted from all over the world by a mysterious Swiss tycoon.
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