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A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK “Homeseeking is about the love of home and family, even against unimaginable circumstances…[A] sweeping epic.” —Good Housekeeping “Fans of historical fiction will want to pick up this exceptional novel immediately.” —Los Angeles Times From WWII to 2008, this deeply moving story follows one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland. Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back. Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me. Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting in the crucible of their lives. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts. At once epic and intimate, Homeseeking is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance, beyond time.
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK “Homeseeking is about the love of home and family, even against unimaginable circumstances…[A] sweeping epic.” —Good Housekeeping “Fans of historical fiction will want to pick up this exceptional novel immediately.” —Los Angeles Times From WWII to 2008, this deeply moving story follows one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland. Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back. Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me. Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting in the crucible of their lives. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts. At once epic and intimate, Homeseeking is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance, beyond time.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the cover
Overture
April 1947
Shanghai
In the last violet minutes of the disappearing night, the longtang wakes.
The neighborhood's familiar symphony opens with the night-soil man's arrival: the trundle of his cart on the uneven road, the chime of his bell. With a slurry and a swish, he empties the latrines left in front of uniform doors and sings a parting refrain. In his wake, stairs and hinges creak; women peek out into the alleyway to claim their overturned night stools. Crouching, they clean silt from the wooden buckets: bamboo sticks clock, clamshells rattle, water from back-door faucets glugs and splatters. By the time they have finished, the sugar porridge vendor has emerged, announcing her goods in repetitive singsong as she pushes her cart. Later, the others will join her: the tea egg man, the pear syrup candy peddler, the vegetable and rice sellers, each with their own seasoned melodies. But for now, it is her lone call that drifts through the lanes of Sifo Li.
She passes the Zhang family shikumen, the sixth row house along this perimeter. Inside, on the second floor, sixteen-year-old Suchi sleeps fitfully after hours of weeping, her slender limbs twisted around the thin cotton sheet, her sweat seeping into the mattress. She is mired in a nightmare in which Haiwen no longer recognizes her. A delicate crust of dried tears rims her lashes.
Next to her is the older Zhang daughter, Sulan, who snuck back home only an hour earlier. Her skin is sticky with the smell of smoke and alcohol and sweat. She sleeps peacefully, dreaming of dancing in a beautiful dress of plum taffeta and silk, arm in arm with her best friend, Yizhen.
In the room above, her father, Li'oe, lies sleepless, troubled by uncertainties. He wonders how much his stash of fabi has depreciated overnight, how much gold he might buy off the black market with what currency he has left. He weighs the continued cost of running his bookstore, of printing the underground journals-all he is taking from his family, not to mention the danger-and for a moment guilt licks at the edge of his thoughts. He regrets now pawning that little ring he purchased the day Suchi was born, two delicate twists of gold braided into one, something he'd saved for her dowry. But Sulan had insisted she'd found the perfect secondhand cloth to make Suchi a qipao for her birthday, and he'd agreed to give Sulan the money. Now he thinks only of how valuable that loop of gold has become.
Beside him, his wife, Sieu'in, pretends to sleep, pretends to be unaware of her husband's nervous shifting. She inventories the food left in their stores-half a cup of rationed gritty red rice, a handful of dehydrated mushrooms, cabbage she pickled weeks ago, radish scraps boiled to broth, a single cut of scallion she has coaxed into regrowth in the spring sun. She can stretch these ingredients for a week, maybe a week and a half-she will make a watery yet flavorful congee, and when none of that remains, she will empty the rice powder from the bag and boil it into milky liquid offering the illusion of nourishment. After that? She won't add to her husband's worries by asking him for more money, she decides. She has a few pieces of jewelry remaining-the jade bracelet that presses coolly against her cheek now, for instance. Her mother gave it to her from her own dowry, and its color is deep, like the dark leaves of the green vegetables she so desperately craves.
A floor and a half below, in the pavilion room, Siau Zi, their boarder and employee, is dreaming of the older Zhang daughter. Sulan smiles invitingly, her lips painted red, her hair permed and clipped. He is effortlessly charming in this dream; for once...
Reviews-
August 1, 2024
Chen, editor in chief of Hyphen magazine and former senior fiction editor at The Rumpus, debuts with a novel she spent a decade writing. As it explores the Chinese diaspora and the lives of two lovers, the narrative spans 60 years and moves between Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Los Angeles. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2024 Library Journal
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
October 28, 2024 In this sweeping and heart-rending debut, Chen brings to life more than 60 years of Chinese history through the tale of childhood sweethearts separated by war and reunited decades later in America. Haiwen, a recent widower, and Suchi, who helps raise her grandkids, cross paths while shopping in 2008 Los Angeles. The two first met as kindergartners in 1930s Shanghai and fell in love as teenagers but were separated by the war between Mao’s Communists and Chiang Kai Shek’s Nationalists. In the historical timeline, Haiwen enlists in the Nationalist army in a misguided effort to help his family, a decision that will tragically reverberate through succeeding generations. Suchi, meanwhile, is sent to Hong Kong with her older sister to escape the war. At times, Chen relies too much on expositional dialogue to capture historical nuances, such as mainlander suppression of native Taiwanese culture, but in tracing Haiwen’s and Suchi’s diverging paths, she conveys the breadth of their sacrifices, making their eventual reunion all the more poignant. As she writes about Suchi’s realizations: “Home wasn’t a place.... It was people who shared the same ghosts as you, of folks long gone, of places long disappeared.” For the most part, Chen scales the heights of her ambition. Agent: Michelle Brower, Trellis Literary Management.
Starred review from November 1, 2024 Major political, military, and economic events in 20th-century China affect the lives and romance of two Shanghainese over many decades. By moving around in time and place--including Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the U.S. from 1938 to 2008--Chen illuminates the parallels and relationships among key moments in China's recent history. Intertwining the macro and micro, she makes readers care deeply about the impact of history on her characters' very private lives. Even the characters' names change to denote their code-switching based on geography and situation. Star-crossed lovers Suchi and Haiwen meet as first graders in pre-WWII Japanese-occupied Shanghai. A family crisis caused by Shanghai's shifting politics forces Haiwen to enlist in the Nationalist Army in 1947, before he can propose to Suchi. After Mao's defeat of Chiang Kai-shek, Suchi lands in Hong Kong, and Haiwen in Taiwan; they meet briefly in the 1960s and do not communicate again until they cross paths in 2008 Los Angeles. Though they follow different paths and marry other people, they remain emotionally "tethered to each other," as predicted in 1945 by a fortune teller who also described the concept of "mingyun"--a person's "personal destiny" as determined by a combination of their intrinsic nature and chosen actions--which is so important to the story. Chen avoids romanticizing or demonizing any of her characters. Nuances of class and ethnicity, as well as political identity, come to life as she digs into crevices of ambivalence and muddled motivation. Suchi marries out of financial desperation. Haiwen abandons his passion for the violin to fight for a cause he knows is lost. Suchi's father, a bookstore owner with progressive ideals, finds himself disillusioned once the Communists he backs take over. Haiwen's cosmopolitan, Anglophile parents are vilified by both Nationalists and Communists. This is historical fiction at its most effective. Romantic lyricism and hard-edged realism merge in this compelling novel.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
November 1, 2024 From heart-wrenching regrets to breathtaking redemptions, Chen's debut novel seamlessly crosses geographical, cultural, and temporal barriers to deliver a love story that touches all extremes of the human condition. Jumping back and forth in time, Homeseeking follows Haiwen and Suchi as they grow up in war-torn Shanghai, become separated by forces beyond themselves, and re-encounter years later in the U.S. While their love strings the story together, the novel is also notable for an all-encompassing portrayal of many types of love--for family, country, memories, music, and even ideologies. A true saga, it pits fate against choice without declaring a winner, allowing compassion and forgiveness to arise despite the worst betrayals. Chen's storytelling focuses on the Chinese diaspora through major historical events, encouraging readers to rethink ideas surrounding foreignness and to better recognize the diversity that exists within this diaspora. A compelling page-turner, Homeseeking offers a strong sense of longing for characters who wish to return, to change, to ask, "Do you ever wonder what our lives would have been like, if only?"
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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