The Leavers

Winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction
One morning, Deming Guo's mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon - and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left mystified and bereft. Eventually adopted by a pair of well-meaning white professors, Deming is moved from the Bronx to a small town upstate and renamed Daniel Wilkinson. But far from all he's ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his adoptive parents' desire that he assimilate with his memories of his mother and the community he left behind.
Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid examination of borders and belonging. It's a moving story of how a boy comes into his own when everything he loves is taken away, and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of the past.

Lisa Ko is the author of The Leavers, which was a 2017 National Book Award for Fiction finalist, won the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2018 PEN/Hemingway Award. The Leavers was a national best seller and was named a 'best book of the year' by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, The Los Angeles Times, and others. Ko's short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories and her essays and nonfiction have been published in The New York Times, The Believer, and elsewhere.