#SRC2017 – The Leavers – Lisa Ko

#SRC2017 – our Summer of Secrets if full of riveting books! This week, we are reading The Leavers, by Lisa Ko!

The Leavers

One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon—and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her.

With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left mystified and bereft. Eventually adopted by a pair of well-meaning white professors, Deming is moved from the Bronx to a small town upstate and renamed Daniel Wilkinson. But far from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his adoptive parents’ desire that he assimilate with his memories of his mother and the community he left behind.

Told from the perspective of both Daniel—as he grows into a directionless young man—and Polly, Ko’s novel gives us one of fiction’s most singular mothers. Loving and selfish, determined and frightened, Polly is forced to make one heart-wrenching choice after another.

Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid examination of borders and belonging. It’s a moving story of how a boy comes into his own when everything he loves is taken away, and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of the past.

Top Secret – Your Mission This Week

Every week, there will be a new challenge for you to complete. Follow the steps below to be entered into our weekly secret giveaway!

• Post a picture inspired by this week’s prompt. This week our prompt is: “Celebrate your heritage.”
• Tag @BookSparks and include #SRC2017

*Bonus points for including your copy of the book in your picture!

About the Author

Lisa Ko is the author of The Leavers, a novel which won the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and will be published by Algonquin Books in May 2017. Her fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2016, Apogee Journal, Narrative, Copper Nickel, Storychord, One Teen Story, Brooklyn Review, and elsewhere. Born in Queens and raised in Jersey, she lives in Brooklyn.