A harrowing and poignant novel following two young women in pursuit of kinship and self-discovery who yearn to survive in a world that doesnt know where either of them belong.
On a university campus in rural Qixian, Lin and Liz make an improbable pair: Lin, a Chinese student closer to her menagerie of pets than to her peers, and Liz, a Chinese American teacher grieving her mothers sudden death. Theyre each met with hostilityLin by her classmates, who mock her for dating a white foreigner; Liz by her fellow English teachers, who exploit their privilegeand forge an unlikely friendship.
After a startling betrayal that results in Lins expulsion, they swap places. Lin becomes convinced to pursue her degree at a community college near Lizs Ohio hometown, while Liz searches for answers as to what drove her parents to leave China before she was born. But when a global catastrophe deepens the fissures between modern-day China and an increasingly fractured United States, Lin and Lizfar from home and estranged from themselvesare forced to confront both the familiar and the strange in each other.
Unspooling over the course of a single extraordinary year in our not-yet-distant past and in small towns from Dandong to Deadwood, Transplants is a piercing story of migration, belonging, and the parts of ourselves that get lost in translation. Alternating between Liz and Lins perspectives, it is a lyrical and moving exploration of race, love, power, and freedom that illuminates the limits and possibilities of what can happen when we open ourselves to the unknown and reveals how even our fiercest differences may bring us closer than we might ever imagine.
