The Leftover Woman

Kwok’s latest featuring two women on a collision course is equal parts family drama and gripping mystery. Jasmine was told her newborn daughter died. But when she discovers her husband actually gave the baby up for adoption, she flees her rural Chinese village to find her in NYC, going deeply in debt to the frightening “snakeheads” who help her enter the country without documentation. The child’s adoptive mother, Rebecca, is an influential literary editor who knows nothing about the sinister circumstances surrounding the adoption. Jasmine is determined to be reunited with her daughter and seeks to make enough money that they can start a new life together; meanwhile Rebecca woos a breakout novelist who’s penned a brilliant new novel on the immigrant experience, but struggles to land her because a blossoming scandal threatens her career. This slow-burning literary thriller builds to an explosive third act; I gasped more than once at a big reveal.