The Foreigner

Winner of the Edgar® Award for Best First Novel by an American AuthorSet against the Taiwanese criminal underworld The Foreigner is Francie Lin''s audacious debut novel. A noirish tale about family fraternity conscience and the curious gulf between a man''s culture and his deepest selfEmerson Chang is a mild mannered bachelor on the cusp of forty a financial analyst in a neatly pressed suit a child of Taiwanese immigrants who doesn''t speak a word of Chinese and well a virgin. His only real family is his mother whose subtle manipulations have kept him close--all in the name of preserving an obscure idea of family and culture.But when his mother suddenly dies Emerson sets out for Taipei to scatter her ashes and to convey a surprising inheritance to his younger brother Little P. Now enmeshed in the Taiwanese criminal underworld Little P seems to be running some very shady business out of his uncle''s karaoke bar and he conceals a secret--a crime that has not only severed him from his family but may have annihilated his conscience. Hoping to appease both the living and the dead Emerson isn''t about to give up the inheritance until he uncovers Little P''s past and saves what is left of his family.The Foreigner is a darkly comic tale of crime and contrition and a riveting story about what it means to be a foreigner--even in one''s own family.