Empty Houses takes place in the aftermath of a shocking incident: a child has disappeared from the park where he was playing. In the days that follow, his mother is distraught. She is tormented by his absence but also by her own ambivalence: did she even want him in the first place? In a working-class neighbourhood on the other side of Mexico City another woman protects her stolen child. As the novel switches between the voices of these two women, Empty Houses explores the desires, regrets and social pressures of motherhood—from the mother who lost her child to the new mother who risked everything to take him. A literary sensation on its original publication, Empty Houses announces an intrepid and original new voice in Mexican literature.