Claire and Aaron’s 22-year-old daughter Lindsey is teaching English in China. When they get a call telling them that Lindsey was hit by a car in Shanghai, they’re both devastated and confused, because as far as they knew, she was working in Beijing.
Lindsey is comatose and her parents come to Shanghai to sit with her and pray that she wakes up. Both Claire and Aaron, who got divorced a few years earlier, want to understand what happened to their daughter. The hit-and-run happened in the early hours of the morning and there were no witnesses.
The book follows the couple in the days following the accident and also traces both the end of their marriage and the erosion of their relationships with Lindsey. We also see Lindsey’s life in China and the secrets she kept from her family, as well as the perspectives of her best friend Johnny and her younger sister Grace, adopted from China as an infant.
This is a book about family, the bond between sisters, and the desire to be loved. It’s also a book about cultural identity, found family, and the things we wished we had said before it was too late.
I’ve read a number of Jennifer Haigh’s books and I’m always dazzled by her talent. I loved the way the disparate elements of this story came together, and I loved how much Haigh’s storytelling drew me in.
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