María had it all figured out: a husband she adored, two daughters, and a comfortable, sheltered life in Diego’s shadow. When Diego, the love of her life, disappears, she discovers at age forty that she doesn’t know who she is without him. Something as simple as going to the bank alone or driving at night becomes a whole new world, and caught between fear and a freedom she had never experienced before, María unwittingly begins the first day of the rest of her life.

Forced to reinvent herself, she finds work in the advertising world and learns to support a household on her own and raise two daughters who grow up far too quickly and leave to study abroad. In the midst of this whirlwind, she allows herself to be swept away by Luca—the husband of Isabel, her lifelong best friend—in a game of desire and complicity that threatens to tear everything apart. María teeters on the edge of the abyss while wondering what she’s really looking for: companionship, escape, or simply to feel again.

On the other side of the world, Isabel takes the opposite path. Fed up with her luxuries and an empty life, she leaves everything behind to travel as an aid worker to the heart of Africa, where an orphaned girl restores the meaning and motherhood that life had taken from her. Her determination not to lose her will lead her to cross every boundary, even those of the law.

From Dawn to Dusk, this is the story of two women seeking the same thing but taking opposite paths: to rediscover themselves and learn to distinguish between the love felt in the flesh and the love felt in the soul. An intimate and luminous novel about loneliness, reinvention, and second chances, written with a tenderness that stays with you long after the last page.