From GMA Book Club pick and Women’s Prize finalist Angie Cruz, a heartfelt novel about a woman who returns to Italy to search for her missing friend, only to uncover unsettling truths about herself

When Stefania doesn’t reply to Bella’s text, Bella immediately knows something is wrong. She and Stefania might see each other only once a year during Bella’s trips to Italy, but they have been friends for twenty years. Stefania always texts back. But days pass with no word, and Bella realizes that, as close as they are, she doesn’t know much about Stefania’s life. She doesn’t know the name of the school where she works, or the phone numbers of her friends and neighbors, or how she spends the other eleven months of the year. Bella’s internet searching leads to nothing. With nowhere else to turn, she flies to Italy to hunt for clues.

In Italy, as Bella digs into Stefania’s life and her own memories, she is forced to confront the possibility that perhaps she hasn’t been as good a friend as she thought. What begins as a search for a missing friend becomes something far more knotty, a journey into a life she thought she understood. And away from the whirlwind of her days in New York City, Bella begins to ask unsettling questions about her own life. Is she a good mother to her daughter? Will she become invisible in her middle age? Has she been selfish with the friends she loves? Bella wants to find Stefania, but can she find herself, too?

With extraordinary immediacy and heart, award-winning author Angie Cruz explores how intimacy can coexist with mystery and how loving someone does not necessarily mean knowing them. Deeply funny and profound, What Women Don’t Say is about how it is never too late to discover the truth of our own stories.