The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Obreht, Téa. The Morningside. Penguin Random House LLC, 2024.

Téa Obreht's novel The Morningside is set in a dystopian society in the near future. Told from the protagonist Sil's first person point of view, the novel is written in both the past and present tenses. The following summary employs the present tense and a linear mode of explanation for the sake of clarity.

When Sil is 11 years old, she and her mother move to Island City. They have recently been recruited by a government program called the Repopulation Program. Via the program, refugees fleeing their newly hostile home climates are given homes in a dying city. The government houses them in an apartment complex called the Morningside, and promises to give them homes of their own in the island's South Falls region.

Sil and her mother move into Sil's aunt Ena's Morningside apartment. Ena is the building superintendent. Although Sil is meeting her aunt for the first time, she immediately falls in love with her. Unlike her mother, Ena loves to talk about the past and to tell stories. Sil's mother gets upset whenever Ena starts relaying anecdotes from their childhood on their parents' farm Back Home. Ena also tells Sil fairy tales and myths, which enchant and distract Sil from her otherwise unfamiliar and lonely circumstances.

One day, Ena tells Sil that Bezi Duras, the woman living in the Morningside penthouse, is an enchantress who has turned three men into the dogs she now keeps as pets. Sil is desperate for more details, but Ena dies from an aneurysm two days later.

After Ena's death, Sil is determined to solve the mystery of Bezi and her dogs. She starts snooping around in the courtyard in an attempt to access Bezi's private penthouse elevator. One day, a man named Lewis May starts showing up in the courtyard too. He agrees to give Sil the extra penthouse elevator key if she retrieves his old mail from the 16D mailbox. May used to be the Morningside superintendent.

Sil uses the key to ride up to Bezi's roof. When she sees Bezi's rooftop gardens, she realizes that Bezi is in fact a Vila, or a powerful spirit.

Shortly thereafter, Sil's mother starts a salvage diving job. She is rarely home, and when she is, she is either sleeping or completing her new Morningside superintendent duties. Therefore, Sil is thrilled when Mila, a girl her age, moves into the building. Sil quickly wraps Mila into her imaginary games and Mila becomes involved in Sil's Bezi investigations. One night, the girls follow Bezi on one of her walks down to South Falls Island. When Sil returns at roughly five in the morning, Sil's mother is furious. She forbids Sil to ever see Mila again.

Not long later, Sil's mother takes a diving job at the sunken Martinique Hotel. The building collapses during the mission, trapping Sil's mother below. While the rescue teams endeavor to save her, Sil stays with Mila's family. Sil meets Mila's father for the first time, and they form a connection. Sil starts speaking to him in Ours, the native Back Home language, and sharing stories about her past. When Sil's mother finds out, she is irate. She has forbidden Sil to use Ours outside the home or to reference their lives before the Morningside. Furthermore, Sil's mother is convinced that Mila's father is a war criminal named Rait Belen.

Sil and her mother go to May for help. After they relay their story about Rait, May makes an announcement on the Dispatch, his underground radio program. Not long later, Mila disappears. Rait goes public, insisting that he is not Rait and that Sil's mother is behind Mila's disappearance.

For years, Sil and her mother live in isolation and seclusion, as the Rait scandal has ostracized them in Island City. Finally, when Sil is 18 she seeks Bezi's help and she, her mother, and May escape Island City.

Years later, Sil and her mother reunite in the desert where Sil and May now live. They talk about the past for the first time, and resolve their differences.