A novel about exile and identity. Mercedes, an Argentine resident in Washington is divorcing her American husband and fears repeating an old pathology: the mysterious loss of her English voice. Susana, an exiled and all but conventional psycoanalyst, will try to help her, while in Buenos Aires, two forgotten friends advance a plot that involves Mercedes and Susana, linking Argentine estancias with rural Virginia, Buenos Aires with Alexandria, and Concord with Paris.