Red Thread of Fate

December 13, 2021
Butler (The Tiger Mom’s Tale) captivates with a well-crafted tale of disaster and revelations. Tam Kwan and her husband, Tony, discuss over the phone their pending adoption of an orphaned boy in China, while he is walking with his cousin Mia. During the call, Tony and Mia are run over and killed by a truck. What follows is a series of heart-wrenching discoveries. First, Tam is persuaded by Mia’s boss to take in Mia’s five-year-old daughter, Angela. Tam had been estranged from Mia since Angela was born, after learning she and Tony were having an affair (he never specified how closely related they were, but Mia had the sense they were second cousins). Now, Tam finds out Tony and Mia were not cousins at all. She also learns her adoptive son’s background was misrepresented. Butler keeps the twists coming, plowing through the story at breakneck speed. She perfectly portrays Tam’s growing sense of ambivalence about the loss of her husband, her responsibility to Angela, and her desire to adopt, and skillfully adds depth to complicated characters such as Mia. Readers will devour this engaging family saga. Agent: Rachel Brooks, Bookends Literary.

January 1, 2022
A Taiwanese American woman is determined to adopt a Chinese orphan as a newly widowed single mother. Tamlei Kwan, aka Tam, age 37, has vowed to follow through on her late husband Tony's promise to adopt a Chinese toddler with special needs. Also, she's recently taken responsibility for Angela, the 5-year-old daughter of Mia, whom Tony had presented, "vaguely," as his first or second cousin. After emigrating from China, Mia lived with Tony and Tam in their Astoria apartment until her estrangement from the couple resulted in her exile to Flushing, where she worked in a nail salon. The cause of the rift is withheld until roughly midway through the novel in an unnecessary ploy to build suspense. Readers will guess early on that Tony and Mia's relations aren't exactly familial, especially since Mia's perspective, in flashbacks, alternates with Tam's. We learn that, in China, Mia was taken in by Tony's parents and had a teenage crush on him. Thinking Mia is out of their lives, Tam experiences a double shock to learn that her husband and Mia have been killed by a careening truck in Flushing. What was Tony doing there? The fact that Mia's stalker ex-boyfriend, Kenny, was either the driver or the passenger of the truck adds a foul-play element that proves to be a red herring. This unduly tortuous plot then turns to the most compelling portion of the novel--scenes from a Chinese orphanage where Tony's dementia-afflicted elderly mother, Xing Xing, once played a pivotal role, whence Tony's decision to adopt from that same orphanage. How the China-Taiwan conflict plays out on the family level is touched on but underdeveloped. The adoptee, Charlie, is 3 but physically and developmentally resembles a 9-month-old. The remainder of the novel deals with Tam's attempts to turn her unruly, impromptu clan into a family. A kindly neighbor's dachshund shelter provides comic relief and is more engaging than a hackneyed romance subplot. Weighty subject matter is undermined by a melodramatic, unfocused treatment.

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January 1, 2022
Tam's marriage to Tony is finally weaving back together as they prepare for the adoption of their son from China. After their lunchtime phone call suddenly disconnects, Tam learns that Tony and his cousin Mia were killed. The unraveling is immediate. Tony wasn't supposed to be in Flushing, where the accident happened; he'd told Tam he was deli-bound near his Columbia office. For years, Tony and Mia were estranged after Tam told Tony either she was leaving or Mia and her baby, Angela, had to vacate their townhouse. So what happened? The dead might not speak, but secrets never die. Life goes on. Angela becomes Tam's, Tam and Angela claim Charlie in Guangzhou, family becomes everything. Readers may tire of Tam's self-absorption, Mia's spite (and her Chinese name is "Mei Guo"--America--because?), Angela's five-year-old precocity, and the insistent coincidence of homicidal truck drivers. Taiwan-born Butler's sophomore title, after The Tiger Mom's Tale (2021), is yet another tangled melodrama, albeit with enough nods to Very Important Issues (family dysfunction, Taiwan-China divide, gender inequity, orphanage horrors) to push it toward literary fiction . . . lite.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.