When Deming is 11, his Chinese American mother vanishes, leaving him with a surrogate family that, no longer able to provide for him, places him with foster parents, two academics who move Deming from New York City to upstate New York and subsequently adopt him. Flash-forward 10 years. Now 21, aimless Deming has flunked out of college, more interested in his music than his studies but always wondering about his mother. How could she have left him? Where is she? Then, after all these years, he learns she has returned to China, and, securing her phone number, he calls her. The action then shifts from his point of view to the first-person voice of his absent mother, telling her side of the story. Will son and mother be reunited? Though obviously skillfully written it's a winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction the book can sometimes be difficult to read, thanks to its bleak subject matter, which, nevertheless, is reflective of today's reality. Those who are interested in closely observed, character-driven fiction will want to leave room for The Leavers on their shelves.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2017 Booklist

Winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, Ko's debut novel brings together the voices of Polly Guo, a manicurist from China, and her young son, Deming, a fifth grader. All are living happily in New York with Polly's boyfriend, Leon; his sister Vivian; and her son Michael, who is like a brother to Deming, until Polly suddenly disappears. Deming is turned over to social services and renamed Daniel Wilkinson by his foster parents, Peter and Kay. When Daniel is later reunited with Michael, the truth about Polly's whereabouts is revealed. What follows is a moving story of Daniel's search for his identity as an abandoned child and young adult in a world where he seeks to find balance as either American, Chinese, or Chinese American. Touching upon themes such as identity, determination, addiction, and loyalty, the author clearly shows readers that she is an emerging writer to watch. VERDICT Ko's writing is strong, and her characters, whether major or minor, are skillfully developed. Readers who enjoy thoughtfully told relationship tales by authors such as Lisa See, Jamie Ford, and Nadia Hashimi will appreciate. [See Prepub Alert, 11/14/16.]-Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Ko is the deserving recipient for the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for this socially engaged novel. Raised in rural China, bold Peilan realizes she is pregnant and decides she does not care to be a wife. She knows the best opportunities are in the United States, so she pays a loan shark to be smuggled to New York. Years later, Peilan, now "Polly," and her son, Deming, live in a cramped apartment in the Bronx. For Deming, life is good. But the day Polly doesn't come home, 11-year-old Deming must start a new life. Adopted by a white couple from rural New York, Deming Guo becomes Daniel Wilkinson. In a predominantly white town, Daniel's coming-of-age is difficult. At a low point in his college years, he unexpectedly discovers a link to his mother and embarks on a journey to find her-and, thus, himself again. Ko adroitly moves back and forth in time and between New York and China. The two parallel and sometimes overlapping stories come full circle as Peilan becomes Polly, Deming becomes Daniel, and the two return to their original names. Mastering English becomes an important status symbol to Polly, just as reclaiming his childhood language of Fuzhounese becomes vital to Daniel's own identity. -VERDICT Ko's characters and their experiences will resonate with most readers. This moving work will particularly appeal to students interested in issues such as undocumented immigrants, poverty, cross-racial adoption, and second-generation Americans.-Tara Kehoe, formerly at the New Jersey State Library Talking Book and Braille Center, Trenton © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A Chinese woman who works in a New York nail salon doesn't come home one day; her young son is raised by well-meaning strangers who cannot heal his broken heart.We meet Bronx fifth-grader Deming Guo on the day his mother disappears without a trace. From there, the story moves both forward and backward, intercutting between the narrative of his bumpy path to adulthood and his mother's testimony. Gradually the picture comes togetherDeming was conceived in China and born in America because his unmarried mother, Peilan, decided she would rather borrow the $50,000 to be smuggled to America than live out her life in her rural village. After her baby is born she tries to hide him underneath her sewing machine at work, but clearly she cannot care for him and work enough to repay the loan shark. She sends him back to China to be raised by her aging father. When Deming is 6, Yi Ba dies, and the boy rejoins his mother, who now has a boyfriend and lives with him; his sister, Vivian; and her son, Michael. After Peilan disappears, Deming is shuffled into foster carehis new parents are a pair of white academics upstate. Ten years later, it is Michael who tracks down a college dropout with a gambling problem named Daniel Wilkinson and sends a message that, if he is Deming Guo, he has information about his mother. The twists and turns continue, with the answers about Peilan's disappearance withheld until the final pages. Daniel's involvement in the alternative music scene is painted in unnecessary detail, but otherwise the specificity of the intertwined stories is the novel's strength. Ko's debut is the winner of the 2016 Pen/Bellwether Prize for Fiction for a novel that addresses issues of social justice, chosen by Barbara Kingsolver. This timely novel depicts the heart- and spirit-breaking difficulties faced by illegal immigrants with meticulous specificity. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Ko's debut is a sweeping examination of family through the eyes of a single mother, a Chinese immigrant, and her U.S.-born son, whose separation haunts and defines their lives. Eleven-year-old Deming's mother, Polly, suddenly disappears from the nail salon where she works, leaving him at the Bronx apartment they share with her boyfriend, Leon, Leon's sister, and her 10-year-old son. Weeks later, Deming is handed over to a "new family"-white suburban college teachers Kay and Peter, who name him Daniel. But it hardly guarantees a storybook ending; Daniel fails in college and struggles to make it as a musician. And then he learns that his missing mother is alive. The narration is then taken over by Polly, who describes her journey to America as an unwed pregnant teenager, and the cramped living arrangements and low-paying jobs that finally take her and Deming to the Bronx. "It was a funny thing, forgiveness," Deming finds. "You could spend years being angry with someone and then realize you no longer feel the same." Ko's stunning tale of love and loyalty-to family, to country-is a fresh and moving look at the immigrant experience in America, and is as timely as ever. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

SOMEBODY WITH A LITTLE HAMMER: Essays, by Mary Gaitskill. (Vintage, $16.) In her first collection of nonfiction, Gaitskill, ever prescient, tackles everything from date rape to politics to her own creative process. Gaitskill borrows from Anton Chekhov for the collection's title; in a way, the essays serve to remind "that unhappy people exist, that however happy he may be, sooner or later life will show him its claws." THE LEAVERS, by Lisa ??. (Algonquin, $15.95.) Ko's novel opens with the disappearance of Deming Guo's mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant in the Bronx. Deming is adopted by a wellintentioned white family, but he is soon called back to China to investigate the mysteries of his life. This novel of migration is a story of belonging, home, loss and identity. THE BEST MINDS OF MY GENERATION: A Literary History of the Beats, by Allen Ginsberg. Edited by Bill Morgan, with a foreword by Anne Waldman. (Grove, $20.) Between 1977 and 1994, Ginsberg gave 100 or so lectures about the cultural movement he helped lead. Morgan has condensed these addresses, organizing them around the figures Ginsberg discusses: Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Ginsberg himself. THE BARROWFIELDS, by Phillip Lewis. (Hogarth, $16.) An Appalachian family's saga is at the center of this debut novel. Henry Aster grows up in North Carolina as the son of a brilliant, troubled man, but once he leaves for college his ties to home become ever weaker, and he breaks his promise to remain close to and protect his younger sister. Years later, Henry grapples with the specter of his father's alcoholism and other demons. The tale is ultimately one of a troubled's family redemption, and of the miracle of forgiveness. THE FIRST LOVE STORY: Adam, Eve, and Us, by Bruce Feiler. (Penguin, $17.) A reconsideration of the Genesis story attempts to scrub away its sexist taint, instead casting Eve as a curious and modern woman, and her relationship with Adam as a healthy, dynamic marriage. Our reviewer, Rich Cohen, called the book "the literary equivalent of breathing life into a figure made of clay." FAST: Poems, by Jorie Graham. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $15.99.) Graham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, explores the erosion of the body, the environment and even the nation, in writing from a time of trauma: Her parents were dying, she was receiving cancer treatment and the country was in tumult. Our reviewer, Adam Fitzgerald, called the collection "an autopsy of self and nation in the face of overwhelming loss."