Real Americans (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780593537251)

READ WITH JENNA'S MAY BOOK CLUB PICK - A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK - From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures?

"Mesmerizing"--Brit Bennett - "A page turner."--Ha Jin - "Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft"--Andrew Sean Greer - "Traverses time with verve and feeling."--Raven Leilani

Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao's Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than it provides answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance--a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made? And if we are made, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?

Author: Rachel Khong
ISBN-10: 0593537254
ISBN-13: 9780593537251
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Language: English
Published: 04/30/2024
Pages: 416
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.50lbs
Size: 9.37h x 6.14w x 1.57d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 11/01/2023 pg. 4
Booklist 01/01/2024 pg. 26
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2024
Publishers Weekly 02/26/2024
BookPage 05/01/2024