The Family Chao: A Novel
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3.7 • 80 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Featured on Barack Obama's 2022 Summer Reading List
An NPR and Vogue Best Book of the Year
Winner of the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
One of Literary Hub's and The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2022
A Goodreads Readers' Most Anticipated Mystery of 2022
An acclaimed storyteller returns with “a gorgeous and gripping literary mystery” that explores “family, betrayal, passion, race, culture and the American Dream” (Jean Kwok).
The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant’s delicious Americanized Chinese food for thirty-five years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. But when the brothers reunite in Haven, the Chao family’s secrets and simmering resentments erupt at last.
Before long, brash, charismatic, and tyrannical patriarch Leo is found dead—presumed murdered—and his sons find they’ve drawn the exacting gaze of the entire town. The ensuing trial brings to light potential motives for all three brothers: Dagou, the restaurant’s reckless head chef; Ming, financially successful but personally tortured; and the youngest, gentle but lost college student James. As the spotlight on the brothers tightens—and the family dog meets an unexpected fate—Dagou, Ming, and James must reckon with the legacy of their father’s outsized appetites and their own future survival.
Brimming with heartbreak, comedy, and suspense, The Family Chao offers a kaleidoscopic, highly entertaining portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with the dark undercurrents of a seemingly pleasant small town.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The immigrant story gets a refreshing new spin in Lan Samantha Chang’s witty novel. Leo Chao is a hated man. The largely white (and largely bigoted) residents of Haven, Wisconsin, resent him for his massively successful restaurant. His wife and three sons loathe him for being a selfish, philandering tyrant. So when Leo’s found dead after the family Christmas party, there’s no shortage of suspects. Inspired by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (and full of fun parallels if you look for them), Chang’s enthralling story turns into a witty murder mystery that drags the dysfunctional Chao family’s secrets into the open. Drawing on her own experiences as a child of Chinese immigrants in the Midwest, Chang deals realistically with the clan’s hardships and sacrifices, but she also shows off her wonderfully dry, Knives Out–like sense of humor. The Family Chao is a great read.
