Michael Tang and his sister, Emily, have both struggled to forge a
sense of identity in their parents' adopted homeland. Emily, an
immigration lawyer in New York City, baffles their mother, Ling, by
refusing to have children. At twenty-six, Michael is unable to
commit to a relationship or a career--or come out to his family.
And now their father, after a lifetime of sacrifice, has passed
away. When Michael finds a letter to his father from a long-ago
friend, he impulsively travels to China in the hopes of learning
more about a man he never really knew. In this rapidly modernizing
country he begins to understand his father's decisions, including
one that reverberates into the present day. Meanwhile, on the other
side of the world, Ling and Emily question their own choices,
trying to forge a path that bends toward new loves and fresh
beginnings. Wendy Lee's powerfully honest novel captures the
complexity of the immigrant experience, exploring one family's
hidden history, unspoken hurts, and search for a place to call
home. Along the whitewashed mud walls are large Chinese characters
written in red, sometimes ending with an exclamation point. They
look as if they are out of another time period, probably some kind
of propaganda. "Go back!" Michael imagines them saying, in a
private message just for him. "This is a mistake! You won't find
what you're looking for! " What, or rather who, Michael is hoping
to find at the end of his trip is a man named Liao Weishu. This is
the name that is signed at the end of a letter that Michael
discovered among his father's things after the funeral. Then his
mother had come into the room, and he had put the letter in his
pants pocket, where it stayed unopened for another nine months.
Sometimes he would think about it, and be satisfied enough to
simply know it was there. The postmark indicated it had been sent
about a month before his father's death, from someplace in China
that he had never heard of and didn't think he knew how to
pronounce. Unfortunately, it was written in Chinese, except for one
sentence toward the end of the letter--"Everything has been
forgiven.""
General
Imprint: |
Kensington Publishing
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
2015 |
First published: |
2015 |
Authors: |
Wendy Lee
|
Dimensions: |
211 x 145 x 20mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
288 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-61773-487-8 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
General & literary fiction >
Modern fiction
|
LSN: |
1-61773-487-X |
Barcode: |
9781617734878 |
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