Searching for Sylvie Lee
Book Feature - Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok
HBL Note: At the very beginning of March, Jean Kwok’s publicist reached out to me to see if I would moderate an event with Jean in July at the Women and Children First bookstore in Andersonville (a Chicago neighborhood and the closest bookstore to my future home.) I was SO excited - it would have been my first live author interview in Chicago. Alas, COVID hit just a few days later and the event was cancelled and the paperback release was postponed from July to December. I still hope I get to meet Jean Kwok someday, once it is safe to do in-store book events again. In the meantime, check out her novel Searching for Sylvie Lee below.
Book Feature - Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok
Book Feature - Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok
From the publisher:
It begins with a mystery. Sylvie, the beautiful, brilliant, successful older daughter of the Lee family, flies to the Netherlands for one final visit with her dying grandmother—and then vanishes.
Amy, the sheltered baby of the Lee family, is too young to remember a time when her parents were newly immigrated and too poor to keep Sylvie. Seven years older, Sylvie was raised by a distant relative in a faraway, foreign place, and didn’t rejoin her family in America until age nine. Timid and shy, Amy has always looked up to her sister, the fierce and fearless protector who showered her with unconditional love.
But what happened to Sylvie? Amy and her parents are distraught and desperate for answers. Sylvie has always looked out for them. Now, it’s Amy’s turn to help. Terrified yet determined, Amy retraces her sister’s movements, flying to the last place Sylvie was seen. But instead of simple answers, she discovers something much more valuable: the truth. Sylvie, the golden girl, kept painful secrets . . . secrets that will reveal more about Amy’s complicated family—and herself—than she ever could have imagined.
A deeply moving story of family, secrets, identity, and longing, Searching for Sylvie Lee is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive portrait of an immigrant family. It is a profound exploration of the many ways culture and language can divide us and the impossibility of ever truly knowing someone—especially those we love.
Book Feature - Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok
