The Astonishing Color of After

When a red bird arrives and speaks her name on the night before her mother’s funeral, 15-year-old Leigh Chen Sanders is certain it’s her mother, who died by suicide, reborn. Soon after, the bird visits again and leaves behind a mysterious box that prompts Leigh to travel to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents—from whom her mother had long been estranged—and find the bird again. Heartbroken and lost, Leigh must come to terms with the truth about her family’s past in order to reconcile her grief. Rife with magical realism, mystical flashbacks and all the traditional hormone-spiked realities of teen life, Emily X.R. Pan’s best-selling debut novel, published in 2018, moves across multiple timelines to bring forth a poignant story about a young woman’s journey through love, loss and acceptance. —Megan McCluskey

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