About this item
Gretchen Lin, adrift at the age of thirty, leaves her floundering marriage in San Francisco to move back to her childhood home in Singapore and immediately finds herself face-to-face with the twin headaches she's avoided her entire adult life: her mother's drinking problem and the machinations of her father's artisanal soy sauce business. Surrounded by family, Gretchen struggles with the tension between personal ambition and filial duty, but still finds time to explore a new romance with the son of a client, an attractive man of few words. When an old American friend comes to town, the two of them are pulled into the controversy surrounding Gretchen's cousin, the only male grandchild and the heir apparent to Lin's Soy Sauce. In the midst of increasing pressure from her father to remain permanently in Singapore - and pressure from her mother to do just the opposite - Gretchen must decide whether she will return to her marriage and her graduate studies at the San Francisco Conservatory, or sacrifice everything and join her family's crusade to spread artisanal soy sauce to the world.
About the Author
Kirstin Chen's new novel, Counterfeit, is forthcoming from William Morrow/HarperCollins (US) and The Borough Press (UK) in June 2022. Her second novel, Bury What We Cannot Take, was named a best book of the season by Electric Literature, The Millions, The Rumpus, Harper's Bazaar, and InStyle. She is also the author of Soy Sauce for Beginners. She has received fellowships from the Steinbeck Fellows Program, Sewanee, Hedgebrook, and Djerassi, among others. Born and raised in Singapore, she lives in San Francisco. Visit her at kirstinchen.com
