From the award-winning author of Flux comes a dazzling novel about love family and the art of
sushi that asks: What if you could return to the point of a fateful choice wiser than before
and find the courage to forge a new path? A coma can change a man but the world Jack Jr.
awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history his Manhattan apartment
is gone and the love of his life has left him behind. He’s been asleep for two years with no
one to turn to he realizes it’s been ten years since he last saw his family. Lost and
disoriented he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of
Fort Lee New Jersey back into the waiting arms of his parents who are operating under the
illusion he never left and back to Joja their ever-struggling sushi restaurant that he was
set to inherit before he ran away from it all. As he steps back into the life he
abandoned—learning his Appa’s life lessons over crates of tuna on bleary-eyed 4 AM fish runs
doling out amberjack behind the omakase counter while his Umma tallies the night's pitiful
number of customers and sparring with his recovering alcoholic brother James—he embraces new
roles too: That of romantic interest to the male nurse who took care of him throughout and
that of sage (but underqualified) uncle to his gangly teenage nephew. There is value in the
joyous rhythms of this once-abandoned life. But second chances are an even messier business
than running a restaurant and the lure of a self-determined path might once again prove too
hard to resist. Why do we run from those we love and why do we still love those who run from
us? A highly entertaining and poignant story about second chances and self-discovery I Leave
It Up to You navigates loss love and the absurdity of finding one’s footing after the ground
gives way.
