'A quietly masterful first novel.' Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh

Westen Gray was just eight years old when his Caucasian mother died and his Chinese father, Xin, sent him away to be raised by her relatives. More than twenty years later, after a lifetime of estrangement, Westen receives an invitation from his father to travel with him to China. So it is that two strangers - a father and a son - travel halfway around the world to a land that one of them knows iintimately and the other has never seen. The future of their relationship hinges on the trip and on the contents of a sealed letter written by Westen's mother before her death - a letter that threatens to answer the lifelong question neither of them has dared to ask.

'Leung's writing is exquisite, deceptively plain, deeply felt and spiritually high, with dead-on depictions of the world as it is... [He] eyes all kinds with compassion, true empathy and bursts of clairvoyance.' San Francisco Chronicle

'Leung reveals a plethora of fascinating answers with beautiful, concise prose and unwavering empathy.' Entertainment Weekly