Rabbit Moon
A Novel
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A tense, propulsive drama set in Shanghai, about a fractured American family, secret lives, and the unbreakable bond between two sisters, from the New York Times bestselling author of Mercy Street.
Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit and run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.
The accident unearths a deeper fissure in the family: the shocking event that ended the Litvaks’ marriage and turned Lindsey against them. Estranged from her parents, she has confided only in her younger sister, Grace, adopted as an infant from China. As Claire and Aaron struggle to get their bearings in bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai, the newly prosperous “miracle city,” they face troubling questions about Lindsey’s life there, in which nothing is quite as it seems.
With Jennifer Haigh’s trademark psychological acuity, Rabbit Moon is a taut, suspenseful story about the ties of marriage that no divorce can sever, and the fabled red thread that pulls two sisters together across time and space. Haigh proves yet again that she is "an expertly nuanced storyteller…her work is gripping, real, and totally immersive" (New York Times).
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In the fluorescent hush of a Shanghai hospital, a fractured American family waits for answers about a daughter’s accident and the secrets that may have led her there. This haunting novel traces the emotional fault lines between ex-spouses Claire and Aaron as they reunite at their daughter Lindsey’s bedside following a devastating hit-and-run. In a city where nothing is familiar, the mystery of Lindsey’s life abroad deepens, forcing her parents to confront the rupture that split their family apart. Back home, Lindsey’s 11-year-old adopted sister, Grace, struggles to make sense of her sister’s silence and her own place in a family adrift. Author Jennifer Haigh weaves the present-tense urgency with layered reflections on adoption, identity, and the limits of parental understanding. With restrained prose and a keen eye for emotional nuance, Rabbit Moon explores how chance, choice, and unfinished history shape the paths we follow and what it takes to find our way back.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A young American woman in Shanghai ends up in a coma after a hit-and-run in Haigh's engrossing latest (after Mercy Street). Lindsey Litvak, 22, is supposed to be teaching English in Beijing, as her mother, Claire, insists to an agent from the U.S. Consulate who calls Claire with the news of Lindsey's accident. Unbeknownst to Lindsey's parents and adopted younger sister, Grace, who was born in China, Lindsey has been moonlighting as an escort. Claire and Lindsey's father, Aaron, who are divorced, fly to China from their homes in the American Northeast, leaving Grace at summer camp without telling her what happened to Lindsey. Upon the pair's arrival in Shanghai, they are unable to speak the language or communicate with Lindsey's doctor, and just barely able to navigate the city, a "veritable sea of people." As Lindsey's coma continues, Haigh alternates between the parents' perspectives, revealing how their old pattern of bickering returns now that they're forced to rely on each other. A final section from Grace's perspective ties up loose ends a bit too conveniently, but for the most part, Haigh keeps this family drama firing on all cylinders, and she succeeds at capturing Shanghai's dizzying effect on her characters. Readers will be transported.
