An epic tale of one iconoclastic family's inheritance of madness — and money — in Brooklyn, Taiwan, and Northern California
In booming postwar Brooklyn, the Nowak Piano Company is an American success story. There is just one problem: the Nowak’s only son, David. A handsome kid and shy like his mother, David struggles with neuroses. If not for his only friend, Marianne, David’s life would be intolerable. When David inherits the piano company at just 18 and Marianne breaks things off, David sells the company and travels around the world. In Taiwan, his life changes when he meets the daughter of a local madame — the sharp-tongued, intelligent Daisy. Returning to the United States, the couple (and newborn son) buy an isolated country house in Northern California’s Polk Valley. As David's health deteriorates, he has a brief affair with Marianne, producing a daughter.
It’s Daisy's solution for the future of her two children, inspired by the old Chinese tradition of raising girls as sisterly wives for adoptive brothers, that exposes Daisy’s traumatic life, and the terrible inheritance her children must receive. Framed by two suicide attempts, The Border of Paradise is told from multiple perspectives, culminating in heartrending fashion as the young heirs to the Nowak fortune confront their past and their isolation.
The Border of Paradise by Esmé Weijun Wang
Esmé Weijun Wang is the author of the New York Times-bestselling essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias and the novel The Border of Paradise, which was one of NPR's Best Books of 2016. She won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize (2016), was named by Granta as one of the “Best of Young American Novelists” in their decennial list (2017), received a 2018 Whiting Award, and was anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2018. Born in the Midwest to Taiwanese parents, Esmé lives in San Francisco. She is the founder of The Unexpected Shape Writing Academy for ambitious writers living with limitations, and can be found at esmewang.com