• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2017 November #1
  Two sisters face the consequences of one's mental illness in Lee's insightful debut novel. With their parents dead by the time the sisters reach early adulthood, the two young immigrants from China depend on each other. Conscientious older sister Miranda and free-spirited Lucia manage well until Lucia begins exhibiting signs of what is variously diagnosed as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, for which she is hospitalized several times. Lee follows the sisters through their forties, broadening out the story to take in the points of view of the gregarious Yonah, Lucia's Israeli immigrant first husband, and hard-working Manny, the Ecuadorian father of her child. While at times the novel loses focus and momentum, it also avoids oversimplifying Lucia's life or turning into a case study, and the tense but loving relationship between the sisters provides structure when the story begins to ramble. The interaction of cultures, with the inevitable misunderstandings that accompany it, forms a vibrant subtheme, and as the novel branches out from New York to Ecuador and then Minnesota, its sense of place deepens. Copyright 2017 Booklist Reviews.

Mira T. Lee's work has been published in numerous quarterlies and reviews, including The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, Harvard Review, and Triquarterly. She was awarded an Artist's Fellowship by the Massachusetts Cultural Council in 2012, and has twice received special mention for the Pushcart Prize. She is a graduate of Stanford University, and currently lives with her husband and two children in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is her debut novel.