'A tremendous achievement.'
ANN NAPOLITANO, author of Hello Beautiful

'Beautiful, sensuous ... a world suspended in time.'
MIRANDA COWLEY HELLER, author of The Paper Palace

'Made me think of Elena Ferrante - it's that good.'
CLARE LESLIE HALL, author of Broken Country

'Sweeping yet intimate, heart-breaking yet hopeful.'
JENNIE GODFREY, author of The List of Suspicious Things

'A beautiful, tender story of love, grief and penmanship.'
PANDORA SYKES

'Tender, sensual, thrilling.'
SARA COLLINS, author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton

'Simply a marvel.'
JENNY JACKSON, author of Pineapple Street

Amidst the vast, sunlit cornfields of Portugal, Maria Lucilia receives a letter. The note is from her husband, Benedito da Silva, who is in exile – serving a punishing seven-year sentence as a fisherman with the White Fleet. But Bene cannot read or write.

In the icy port town of St John’s, Newfoundland, another woman welcomes Bene into her life and composes a letter to a stranger across the sea. Maria Alvares, a widowed shopkeeper, knows the uneasy power she wields – the other woman, lending a voice for the man she loves to reach the wife he left behind.

Though thousands of miles stand between them, the two Marias are drawn irresistibly to know each other. Slowly, in the margins and footnotes of the letters, a deep connection emerges: fears, hopes, and secrets neither woman has spoken aloud. What grows between them has the power to sustain – or undo – them both.

Intimate, atmospheric, and infused with a powerful yearning, Maria, Maria is inspired by a piece of the author’s own family history. Jennifer Galvão's debut novel is a story of hope and endurance – in which the deepest bonds form not between lovers, but rivals.