WHAT WE KEPT TO OURSELVES

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Story of Mina Lee comes a propulsive new novel of a family that unravels when a stranger is found dead in their backyard, only to find he might hold the key to finding their mother who disappeared a year ago.

1999: The Kim family is struggling to move on with their lives after their mother, Sunny, disappeared a year ago without a trace. Sixty-one-year-old John Kim feels more isolated from his grown children than ever: Anastasia, who abruptly quit her job, and Ronald, who runs the family's plant nursery business. But one evening, their already-fragile lives are upended when John discovers the body of a dead unhoused stranger in their backyard outside of Koreatown, Los Angeles. The tragedy seems random until John finds the man was carrying a letter to Sunny, sparking a journey to uncover the stranger's history and possible connections to her - only to realize that someone has been watching them.

1977: Sunny Kim is pregnant and has just moved to America from Korea with her new husband, who works all the time. America is not turning out what she had dreamed it to be, and the loneliness and isolation is broken only when she unexpectedly meets a stranger at a bus stop. That fateful meeting sparks an unexpected friendship that carries through the decades and echoes into the Kims' lives in the present, as they uncover devastating secrets that threaten to undo them all - putting not only everything they thought they knew about their mother at risk, but their very lives as well.

Through a dual narrative that explores the secrets and the unsaid between parents and children, husbands and wives, What We Kept to Ourselves is a riveting mystery as the family races against the clock for answers, and a piercing exploration of human connection and what it means to dream in America.

Nancy Jooyoun Kim is the New York Times bestselling author of What We Kept to Ourselves and The Last Story of Mina Lee, a Reese's Book Club pick. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.