Celebrated novelist Frances Oppenheimer has long been an enigma, a mystery even to her closest observer: her daughter. In the shadow of a family tragedy never spoke of, Frances has retreated even further, and the desire to understand her has grown stronger still.

Now tasked with writing a manuscript of her own, Frances’ daughter cannot move beyond the one subject she has spent her life researching. Combining inherited stories, overheard conversations, family heirlooms, and scenes of her own imagination, she sets out to assemble a portrait that may at last bring her mother into view.

Precise and poignant, The Unknowing is a striking debut exploring how fiction refracts truth, how families create their own mythologies, and how we reinvent the people we love to understand ourselves.