Real Americans

It’s thrilling when a book doesn’t shy away from big ideas or big emotions, even better if it features both. Rachel Khong has ambition to spare. Like her acclaimed debut Goodbye, Vitamin, her new novel is a family story, but she has widened her canvas. Spanning continents and generations, Real Americans tackles everything from Chinese history to the ethics of gene editing in a story that rivetingly explores whether we can truly be masters of our fates.

This story begins on the cusp of Y2K—the dawn of a new era full of unknown but tantalizing promise. Lily Chen is a Chinese-American born to two scientists who fled the Cultural Revolution. As an unpaid intern at a media company, she crosses paths with Matthew, who as a native East Coaster and trust funder couldn’t be more different than her. Nonetheless, they fall in love. Then out of it. Fast forward fifteen years and Lily is living on a remote island with her son Nick, who suspects his mother is keeping more than a few secrets from him. A journey to uncover the identity of his biological father unearths the surprising and unexpected inheritances passed down from his family to Nick.

If you like a novel that occupies your thoughts days after reading it, don’t miss out on Real Americans. This is a thoughtful and moving family saga that sings on every page.

Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn’t be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can’t shake the sense she’s hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.