Meet Sira, a young Spanish seamstress living a quiet life in pre-civil war Madrid -- until she decides to leave her respectable fiancé for a scoundrel who promises her the world and then abandons her in Tangiers. Penniless, desperate and trapped in Africa by the outbreak of war in Spain, Sira reinvents herself as a high-fashion couturier. With the help of a friend, a pile of weapons, and a black market connection, she opens her first atelier in Morocco. Chez Sirah caters to the high-society foreign women of Tetouan and brings Sira into contact with the politically powerful figures who will embroil her in international espionage. Sira joins crowds of expatriates commingling at lavish balls while their countries wage war, aware that while she receives boxes of decadent candies bearing coded messages from the head of British SIS, others are digging through garbage pails to find scraps of potato peelings to eat.

Maria Duenas weaves Sira's story in and around the lives of historical figures while filling the novel with lush descriptions of high fashion and international locales. But by the time Sira arrives in Portugal, many of the novel's interesting secondary characters have been lost, replaced by the action-packed scenes of a formulaic spy novel. For a slow-moving, sprawling story, the ending presents a sudden attempt at happily-ever-after and a romantic resolution inconsistent with the complex story of an independent, capable woman.

EMILY WALZ