Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Thriller / suspense fiction

THE CONJOINED

Jen Sookfong Lee

On a sunny May morning, social worker Jessica Campbell sorts through her mother's belongings after her recent funeral. In the basement, she makes a shocking discovery: Two dead girls curled into the bottom of her mother's chest freezers. She remembers a pair of foster children who lived with the family in 1988: Casey and Jamie Cheng - troubled, beautiful, and wild teenaged sisters from Vancouver's Chinatown. After six weeks, they disappeared; social workers, police officers, and Jessica herself assumed they had run away.

As Jessica learns more about Casey, Jamie, and their troubled immigrant Chinese parents, she also unearths dark stories about Donna, whom she had always thought of as the perfect mother. The complicated truths she uncovers force her to take stock of own life. Moving between present and past, this riveting novel unflinchingly examines the myth of social heroism and traces the often-hidden fractures that divide our diverse cities.

Jen Sookfong Lee is a writer and radio personality. She is the author of The End of East (Knopf 2007), which shines a light on the Chinese Canadian story, the repercussions of immigration and the city of Vancouver. Jen's second novel The Better Mother, (Knopf,2011) was shortlisted for the City of Vancouver Book Award.

Available products
Book Published 2016-09-13 by ECW Press
Book Published 2016-09-13 by ECW Press

Comments

The Conjoined is a complex, refreshing and relevant departure from a well-worn approach, one that’s best tackled after surrendering your expectations. Read more...

The mystery of how the girls died is not the book’s main focus, but this captivating novel still moves with the pace of a thriller as it deftly fills in the gaps in the lives of several people, each fractured by horrors of their very own, joined as one in betrayal, trauma, and uncertainty.

This is a page-turner—guaranteed to be read hungrily in one or two sittings—but an intensely literary one. Read more...

Jen Sookfong Lee demonstrates a growing confidence in her third novel. Read more...

If the promise of sex and violence keeps the pages turning, it is her complex networks of relationships and situations, in which each character’s personal baggage seems to echo or invert the next, in which traumas and desires seem to double and recombine from generation to generation, from family to family, from romance to romance – it is this map of human connections that offers the novel’s greatest reward. Read more...

Sookfong Lee is a gifted writer, telling a complicated story with depth and insight . . . The Conjoined is a quick, compelling read. But its characters and their stories will linger.

With flawless writing and gothic imagination, Lee shows how a forgotten crime can reveal uncomfortable truths about family, class, and racism. The Conjoined is a fearless novel and a compulsive read.