Description

A widow and her two grown children search for answers about the past in both America and China, in this insightful novel of an immigrant family's journey.

After a lifetime of sacrifice, Ling's husband has passed away. Though she has both a son and a daughter to comfort her, she has struggled to understand how they live their lives--Emily, an immigration lawyer in New York City, inexplicably refuses to have children; and Michael is unable to commit to a relationship or a career.

Michael yearns for a deeper connection to his family, but has never been able to find the courage to come out to them as gay. But when he finds a letter to his father from a long-ago friend--written mostly in Chinese except for a mysterious line at the end: Everything has been forgiven--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.

From the author of Happy Family, named one of the top ten debuts of the year by Booklist, this is a powerfully honest novel that captures the complexity of the immigrant experience, exploring one family's hidden history, unspoken hurts, and search for a place to call home.