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Homeseeking by Karissa Chen

Literary fiction

Homeseeking

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Karissa Chen, on your first book!

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by Karissa Chen

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Quick take

This profound saga follows one couple’s love and heartbreak, sprawling across sixty years and thousands of miles.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Emotional

    Emotional

  • Illustrated icon, 400

    400+ pages

  • Illustrated icon, Nonlinear_Timeline

    Nonlinear timeline

  • Illustrated icon, Immigration

    Immigration

Synopsis

A single choice can define an entire life.

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.

Content warning

This book contains scenes that depict sexual assault and mentions of suicidal ideation and miscarriage.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Homeseeking.

Homeseeking

APRIL 1947

Shanghai

In the last violet minutes of the disappearing night, the longtang wakes.

The neighborhood’s familiar symphony opens with the nightsoil 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.

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Why I love it

I am a firm believer that books are best enjoyed on a comfy couch, accompanied by tea. So, when I found that I couldn’t help but open Homeseeking on the subway, desperate to see how the pieces of the novel would come together, I knew it was an exceptional read. Homeseeking is delicate, grand, and harmonious. I never wanted it to end and, immediately after I finished the book, I wished I could read it again for the first time.

People say that first loves always linger. That is certainly the case for Suchi and Haiwen. They strike up a friendship in their first grade class in Shanghai and spend their teenage years plotting the rest of their lives together. But as China descends deeper into war, Haiwen leaves Suchi behind to enlist. The invisible string connecting them seemingly breaks that day, but, sixty years later, it brings Suchi and Haiwen back together in a LA grocery store.

Homeseeking covers vast territory, transporting us from Asia to the United States over the span of decades. It is also a vulnerable account of two intertwined lives, exploring how we find comfort in places, people, ourselves, and our stories. I can say with certainty that I found a little slice of home in this book. Like Suchi and Haiwen’s relationship, it is a story that will stay with me for a very long time.

Member ratings (189)

December 2024
Homeseeking
Definitely Better Now
Beautiful Ugly
The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
The Thirteenth Child
December 2024
View all
Homeseeking
Definitely Better Now
Beautiful Ugly
The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
The Thirteenth Child