August 8, 2022
In Chin’s whimsical if uneven debut novel (after the memoir Let the Tornado Come), a young woman gets an unexpected inheritance from a neighbor. Leah Fern, 21, receives a large sum of cash from the estate of photographer Essie East, along with Essie’s ashes. In a letter, Essie instructs Leah where to scatter her remains and promises information on the whereabouts of Leah’s mother, Jeannie Starr, a carnival magician who abandoned Leah at age six. As Leah recovers additional letters from Essie on a trail that leads across the U.S. and Canada, Essie’s life story and her relationships with four other artists—particularly her complicated ties to a jeweler and blacksmith—gradually come into focus. The plot is a bit hackneyed and the final twist involving Jeannie predictable, but Chin has a sure hand in showing Leah’s transformation as she processes her childhood neglect and learns to open up. “Have the courage to love,” writes Essie in one of her letters, prompting Leah to forge bonds with those she meets along the way, including the proprietor of an animal sanctuary and a waitress who helps Leah locate an important landmark. Though this often feels well-worn, Chin reaches some admirable heights. Agent: Maggie Cooper, Aevitas Creative Management.
September 1, 2022
An unexpected inheritance leads a young woman on a trip across the U.S. and Canada. Leah Fern and her magician mother, Jeannie Starr, were part of the Blazing Calyx Carnival up until her mother left her with a friend and never returned. Fifteen years later, on her 21st birthday, Leah feels "penned in by the impenetrable wires of solitude, weighted by the kind of shapeless helplessness only the abandoned know," and has decided to end her life. A knock interrupts her plans, however, and she receives news that her neighbor Essie East has died and left her an inheritance. After some initial reluctance due to not knowing the woman well, Leah is given a box containing a letter, a check, and an obelisk-shaped urn inlaid with gemstones containing Essie's ashes. The letter explains that Essie knew Leah's mother and that if Leah follows her instructions to scatter her ashes, more information about her mother will be revealed. The letter also has the address for the post office where she'll find the next letter. With each letter Leah learns more about her mother and Essie's life. Essie describes how she befriended four kindred spirits at an artists' colony, and they decided to perform nine full moon ceremonies across North America together--the same route Leah discovers she is following to scatter Essie's ashes. Though this plot feels familiar, there is much to admire about the author's glittering imagination. Descriptive writing is both a strength and a weakness for Chin. The pacing is unbalanced because she spends too much time on vivid descriptions of very minor things. While beautiful, these meandering moments often untether the plot, which eventually becomes hard to recover. Nevertheless, traveling with Leah Fern and seeing the world through the eyes of an empath are enjoyable. And Chin's final piece of insight--"What we know is that even the most lost people can find their way"--reverberates through the pages. Glowing moments of wisdom but imperfect prose.
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Starred review from September 1, 2022
On her twenty-first birthday, empath Leah Fern is ready to take her own life. She knows her mother, the carnival magician Jeannie Starr, simply walked away, leaving teenage Leah to be adopted by a caring man, Edward Murphy, but large swathes of Leah's life remain unknown. What was Murphy's relation to her mom? Why did her mother leave? Was she an empath, like Leah? The answers might lie in a set of nine letters waiting in nine post offices around the country, left for Leah by a mysterious neighbor, Essie East. "I knew your mother, Jeannie Starr. Our lives, for a time, coincided in ways you might be interested in knowing about," wrote Essie in a letter Leah receives after the neighbor's death. Clutching at straws for answers, Leah follows Essie's trail, scatters the woman's ashes as directed, and slowly pieces together the story of her long-lost mother. Filled with magical realism, this is a moving story about the power of faith and community to deliver hope even in the most trying times. Chin (Let the Tornado Come, 2014) delivers an endearing protagonist whose epic quest ends with a measure of closure and wonder about the magic embedded in the unknown.
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