Yiyun Li

Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised--the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now, Agnès is free to tell her story. As children in a war-ravaged, backwater town, they'd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves--until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic...

A woman in her early 40s moves from China to America to start a new life. Her father comes to visit her due to her recent divorce. Their generational conflicts reveal the darker lies and cover-ups within her family during the Cultural Revolution.