First published 2024
Shanghai, 2007. Fourteen-year-old Alva lives with her American expat mother and has never met her Chinese father. She believes America holds the key to a better life. When her mother becomes engaged to Lu Fang, their wealthy Chinese landlord, Alva's American dreams crumble. She sets her sights on the American School in Shanghai instead. There she finds a world of privileged expats and the wild freedoms that money can buy in a rapidly changing city. Twenty-two years earlier in Qingdao, Lu Fang works as a clerk in a shipping yard. Once ambitious, he has become another victim of China's brutal political reforms. When China welcomes its first wave of foreigners in decades, Lu Fang meets an American woman who forces him to question his life and his desires. Two generations collide as each searches for belonging in a world where East meets West and dreams often disappoint.
Genres: contemporary, 21st-century, asian-american, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Qingdao, Shanghai
Period: 2007, 1980s
348 pages · Kindle Edition · William Morrow