A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK In this dazzling debut novel a hidden and nearly forgotten magic—of
Reforging pencils bringing the memories they contain back to life—holds the power to transform
a young woman’s relationship with her grandmother and to mend long-lost connections across
time and space. Monica Tsai spends most days on her computer journaling the details of her
ordinary life and coding for a program that seeks to connect strangers online. A
self-proclaimed recluse she's always struggled to make friends and as a college freshman
finds herself escaping into a digital world counting the days until she can return home to her
beloved grandparents. They are now in their nineties and Monica worries about them
constantly—especially her grandmother Yun who survived two wars in China before coming to the
States and whose memory has begun to fade. Though Yun rarely speaks of her past Monica is
determined to find the long-lost cousin she was separated from years ago. One day the very
program Monica is helping to build connects her to a young woman whose gift of a single pencil
holds a surprising clue. Monica’s discovery of a hidden family history is exquisitely braided
with Yun’s own memories as she writes of her years in Shanghai working at the Phoenix Pencil
Company. As WWII rages outside their door Yun and her cousin Meng learn of a special power
the women in their family possess: the ability to Reforge a pencil’s words. But when the
government uncovers their secret they are forced into a life of espionage betraying other
people’s stories to survive. Combining the cross-generational family saga and epistolary form
of A Tale for the Time Being with the uplifting emotional magic of The Midnight Library
Allison King’s stunning debut novel asks: who owns and inherits our stories? The answers and
secrets that surface on the page may have the unerasable power to reconnect a family and
restore a legacy.
