What We Left Unsaid - Hardcover

Li, Winnie M.

 
9781982190880: What We Left Unsaid
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1982190884 ISBN 13: 9781982190880
Verlag: Atria Books, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

On an unexpected road trip, three estranged siblings uncover a startling family secret and larger truths about being Asian American in a post-COVID world—from the author of the “dazzling and devastating” (Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author) thriller Complicit.

The Chu siblings haven’t seen each other in years but when they’re told that their ailing mother is scheduled for an operation next month, they agree to visit her together. Then their mother makes an odd request: before seeing her, they must go on a road trip together to the Grand Canyon.

Thirty years ago, a strange incident had aborted a previous family road trip there. No one’s ever really spoken about it, but during this journey, the middle-aged Chu siblings have no choice but to confront their childhood experience.

Together, Bonnie, Kevin, and Alex travel along Route 66—but as the trip continues, they realize the Great American Road Trip may not be what they expected. Facing their own prejudices and those of others, they somehow learn to bridge the distances between them, the present-day, and their past.

With “powerful and beautiful writing” (Sarah Pearse, New York Times bestselling author), Winnie M Li weaves an emotive and eye-opening exploration of family, race, growing up, and what it means to be American.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Winnie M Li is an American author and activist living in the UK with her partner and young son. A Harvard graduate, Winnie has written for travel guidebooks, produced independent feature films, programmed for film festivals, and developed eco-tourism projects. Her first novel Dark Chapter was nominated for an Edgar Award and translated into ten languages, followed by the critically acclaimed Complicit. A survivor and advocate against gendered violence, she holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and teaches creative writing and media studies.

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Chapter 1
At five p.m. Eastern Standard Time the next day, Bonnie is sitting in her home office, leaning forward in the luxury ergonomic chair that she bought to get her through all those endless Zoom meetings of the pandemic. She is always slightly anxious before phone calls with her parents. They are equal parts comforting and exasperating in their familiarity, but also a reminder of the frugal, clipped household she grew up in, one that she was secretly ashamed of when she first started dating Chris—and perhaps has tried too hard to leave behind.

Her family members flicker to life one by one, until they are all there stacked in a neat four-square—centimeters apart on-screen, thousands of miles apart in real life.

Her parents peer into their camera, always slightly mistrusting any pixilated form of communication. They must be sitting in bed together, because she can see their pale blue padded headboard, unchanged for forty years. The iPad on their laps catches their faces at a low, unnatural angle.

Mom in particular looks thinner, paler, a wizened ghost of the tenacious mother she’s known all her life—and Bonnie registers this with shock. But she tamps down the gnawing worry and greets her parents with her usual cheeriness.

“How was the hospital, Mom?”

Her mom sniffs and shrugs, revealing that familiar defeatist attitude. “It was okay. The food was lousy. I’m glad to be back.”

This is a grumpier version of Mom, shorn of all softness or pleasantness.

“Are you… is there a procedure happening?” Kevin ventures.

“I’m sick of procedures.” Mom shakes her head. “They are doing something else to me in about a month.”

They all nod in silence.

Bonnie notes this is the first time Kevin and Alex have been in the same space (virtual or otherwise) in five years. But with Zoom, they don’t have to acknowledge each other’s presence. They can just exist, side by side on-screen, never making direct eye contact. Which is impossible anyway with Zoom, Bonnie realizes. You can look at your sister’s eyes on-screen, but you’ll never know if she’s actually looking at you.

Each of them contemplates the unspoken, nodding silently around the fact of Mom’s medical condition.

In the meantime, they cycle through some more pleasantries of catching up: how is Alex’s job, how are Jess and the kids, Chris and the boys. Bonnie is distinctly aware that Alex’s news remains a secret—and that it is not her place to hint at any of it.

“So, Mom, why did you want to have a Zoom with all of us?” Bonnie finally asks, trying to be as gentle as possible.

“Can’t I see my children all at once?” Mom jokes, a righteous note rising in her voice.

“No, of course you can.” Bonnie imagines that in ten years, she may be asking the same thing of her sons.

“I never get to see all you,” Mom continues. “I mean, one by one, yes. But when was the last time we were all together?”

“I think that might have been Christmas sometime,” Bonnie offers vaguely. She shoots a look at Alex, then Kevin, but they’re staring straight ahead, offering no assistance. Thanks, guys.

“So long ago.” Mom shakes her head sadly. “What happened?”

Does Mom really have no idea? Something did happen; they were all there to witness it at the dinner table. She remembers Kevin’s taunting voice, Alex storming off. Her parents, as always, pretending like nothing ugly had happened.

“We just sort of… got really busy,” Kevin says lamely. “Raising two young kids in lockdown, that was nuts.”

“I know,” Mom says. “I raised three of you. All while your dad was working to support us. I know what it’s like.”

Whatever Mom says, it always lodges a shard of guilt deep inside Bonnie.

“I’m sorry,” Alex finally speaks up. “I’ve been really terrible at keeping in touch…” She trails off, takes a breath, and Bonnie wonders if this is the moment when Alex will share her news, as startling and revelatory as it is.

But before Alex can continue, Mom launches into a deep, hacking cough, the phlegm gurgling in her throat, and Bonnie shudders. How long has she had that cough for?

“Mom, you okay?” Alex asks.

Mom shakes her head, clears her throat again, reaches for a cup of water.

After she’s sipped and recovered, she continues.

“So, I think it’s time. I want to see all of you again.”

It’s time? There is a terrible finality to the phrase, which alarms Bonnie.

“What, like, now?” Kevin asks. He sounds just like Bonnie’s fourteen-year-old. The teenage indignation.

Mom nods. “Now. This month.”

“This month?” Kevin exclaims.

Bonnie panics. “Is it that serious?”

Mom shrugs. “What is serious, Bonnie? A mother wants to see her children after years apart. Isn’t that normal?”

Years. Bonnie absorbs this fact. What would it be like to go years without seeing Max and Henry and Milo? Impossible to even contemplate. She wonders if the ache of motherhood subsides with age.

“My procedure is on the twenty-sixth. I want to see you all before then. Together.”

Kevin sighs audibly, and Alex is still quiet—her video frozen for a split second.

“Okay,” Kevin says, ever the obedient son. He glances down—presumably at his phone. “What weekend?”

“It doesn’t matter what weekend,” Dad speaks up. “We’re retired. It’s all the same to us. You three work it out.”

“But,” Alex says, then pauses. “I’ll—I’ll have to look at flights.”

Mom shakes her head, then explodes into another violent fit of coughing.

“No. Don’t just fly here.” Mom gestures toward the screen, as if to admonish them. “I want you to drive together. The three of you.”

Bonnie lurches in shock. “Drive?! Mom, you live in California, I’m near Boston…” She does a quick calculation. It would probably take five, six days to drive all the way to the West Coast. Can she be away from her sons for that long?

Kevin’s eyes are wide in disbelief, and Alex still appears frozen. Or maybe just in shock, too.

“You don’t have to drive the whole way,” Mom argues. “I just want you to drive together. A road trip, like the old days.”

What old days? Bonnie thinks. But then she grasps a memory of sitting in the back seat of their old beige station wagon, the three of them watching the shape of their parents’ heads, as miles of highway slid past. There had been road trips, on occasion.

“I want you to drive here to California. And I want you to—” Mom stops and coughs, then resumes. “I want you to see the Grand Canyon together.”

A strained, unfamiliar feeling of regret curdles within Bonnie. The Grand Canyon. She lingers on an image: flat, dusty desert rolling endlessly past their car windows.

They had once tried to drive to the Grand Canyon as a family. When she was a teenager. Why they never made...

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Verlag
Atria Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2025
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1982190884
ISBN 13 
9781982190880
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
355
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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