A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK Named a Best
Book of the Year by The New York Times The Washington Post TIME NPR Entertainment Weekly
Vanity Fair O the Oprah Magazine Esquire Marie Claire Harper's Bazaar Good Housekeeping
Refinery29 Real Simple Kirkus Reviews Electric Literature and Lit Hub A masterpiece. -NPR
No other novel this year captures so gracefully the full palette of America. -The Washington
Post Wryly funny gently devastating. -Entertainment Weekly A funny and profound story about
family in all its strange forms joyful and hard-won vulnerability becoming who you're
supposed to be and the limits of love. Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in
Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care
teacher and they've been together for a few years-good years-but now they're not sure why
they're still a couple. There's the sex sure and the meals Mike cooks for Benson and well
they love each other. But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as
his acerbic Japanese mother Mitsuko arrives in Texas for a visit Mike picks up and flies
across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation
discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home Mitsuko and Benson are stuck
living together as unconventional roommates an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning
more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike's immediate pull Benson
begins to push outwards realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the
goods to get it. Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together or
fracture everything they've ever known. And just maybe they'll all be okay in the end.
