Homeseeking

Pachinko meets Past Lives in this transporting and heartrending novel about first loves, new beginnings and second chances, set between Shanghai, Taiwan, Hong Kong and LA and spanning almost seventy years

There are moments when a single choice can define an entire life. Haiwen and Suchi are teenage sweethearts in 1940s Shanghai; their childhood friendship has blossomed into young love, and they believe that they are soulmates. But when Haiwen secretly decides to enlist in the army to keep his brother from the draft, their shared future is shattered. Their paths take them far afield from each other, with the exception of one pivotal chance encounter on the Hong Kong ferry in 1966.

Sixty years later, Haiwen, now in his late seventies, is bagging bananas at a 99 Ranch in Los Angeles when he lifts his head to once more see Suchi. As they begin to rekindle their friendship, it feels like they might have a second chance to live the life they were supposed to have together. But the weight of the past lives with them at every moment, and only time will tell if they are able to forge something new.

Told in alternating narratives, Homeseeking spans seven decades, through the most tumultuous period of modern Chinese history up to contemporary times, tracing the separated lovers as they migrate from Shanghai to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and America.

Review

Sweeping, epic, yet deeply intimate, Homeseeking traces a pair of first loves and the gossamer thread that binds them across six decades and four nations as the world splits them apart, again and again. A spellbinding meditation on family, immigration, and the many faces of courage in times of hardship, this is a dazzling debut. -- Kirstin Chen, New York Times bestselling author of Counterfeit

An absolute stunner of a debut. Chen nimbly tackles too often overlooked history in an exploration of surviving the trauma of war and loss of home. Homeseeking is a novel that asks if those who survive by moving forward and those who sustain by looking back can ever truly meet. -- Erika Swyler, author of The Book of Speculation

A love story in more ways than one, Homeseeking is a beautiful, nuanced look at Chinese history, family, young love, and the wisdom of age. As Suchi and Haiwen do their best to survive their lives, we follow them across the circumstances and choices that continually separate them, and bring them back together - even as their worlds keep changing. By the end I was in tears. Remarkable -- Vanessa Chan, author of The Storm We Made

Karissa Chen's debut novel weaves expertly between present and past, telling the story of childhood sweethearts who meet again late in life and are torn between looking back and moving on. A kaleidoscopic yet intimate view of the Chinese diaspora, Homeseeking explores how identities flex and transform during war-and which fundamental parts of us remain the same no matter where we find ourselves. -- Celeste Ng, author of Our Missing Hearts

Homeseeking is a perfect love song, beautiful and poignant and tender and sad. A tour de force of storytelling and a book with real faith in the human heart, with all its immense capacity for both love and hatred. Read it. It will make time stand still. Karissa Chen is the writer we've been waiting for, and Homeseeking is a must read -- Matthew Salesses, author of The Sense of Wonder

Through its glittering and heartrending depictions of war, forced movement, broken love stories, and the tumultuous Chinese-Taiwanese 20th century, this spellbinding debut ingeniously captures the paradox of the immigrant experience: doggedly looking forward while uncontrollably looking back. -- Juliet Grames, author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

Epic, assured, and beautifully drawn, Homeseeking is a love story that reveals the effects of war and history on the lives of individuals. Karissa Chen has created a world that's deeply absorbing, following Suchi and Haiwen across decades, borders, and lifetimes -- Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers

In Homeseeking, Karissa Chen brings a rare delicacy to the pain of history, exploring what it means for generations to be simultaneously imprisoned by and separated from the past. Her characters linger with desperate vividness in each other's memories - as they long will in her readers' imaginations -- Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian

About the Author

Karissa Chen is a writer who splits her time between New Jersey and Taipei, Taiwan. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Atlantic, Bon Appetit, Eater, The Cut, NBC News, Catapult, Gulf Coast, PEN America, and Guernica, among others. She was a Fulbright Fellow in Taiwan in 2015-2016 and was awarded a 2019 artist fellowship from the NJ Council on the Arts. She was formerly the Senior Fiction Editor at The Rumpus and currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Hyphen magazine. She received her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College.