A Paper Son

(Tyrus Books, now part of Simon & Schuster. 2016.)

On the first day of school after winter break, Peregrine Long, a third-grade teacher who moonlights as a writer, discovers the image of a family floating on his tea. The image inspires a story—it’s Canton, 1925, and the family has just returned from America. After he publishes the opening of the serial in a local journal, Eva Wong appears at Peregrine’s door, journal in hand, and accuses him of stealing her family’s history. She’s not concerned with the supposed theft, though—she just wants to know what happened to her Uncle Henry.

So Peregrine becomes the unwitting guide in a search for a boy who’s been missing for eighty-five years—a search that begins just as an unrelenting downpour sets upon San Francisco. He is joined by his brash, headstrong sister and an exotic polyglot who teaches kindergarten by morning and spends nights in her seaside apartment, beckoning to ghosts ships and cataloguing their arrivals. An exquisite exploration of the Pacific immigration experience, A Paper Son is a magical debut about memory, love, loss, and the power of storytelling.