Romeo and Juliet meets Chinese mythology in this magical novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Astonishing Color of After.
AN ARROW TO THE MOON
by Emily X.R. Pan
Little, Brown BYR, April 2022
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)
In Fairbridge, a series of bizarre phenomena brings together a pair of star-crossed lovers from rival families.
Hunter Yee has perfect aim with a bow and arrow, but all else in his life veers wrong. He’s sick of being haunted by his family’s past mistakes. The only things keeping him from running away are his little brother, a supernatural wind, and the bewitching girl at his new high school.
Luna Chang dreads the future. Graduation looms ahead, and her parents’ expectations are stifling. When she begins to break the rules, she finds her life upended by the strange new boy in her class, the arrival of unearthly fireflies, and an ominous crack spreading across the town of Fairbridge.
As Hunter and Luna navigate their families’ enmity and secrets, everything around them begins to fall apart. All they can depend on is their love…but time is running out, and fate will have its way.
AN ARROW TO THE MOON, Emily X.R. Pan’s brilliant and ethereal follow-up to The Astonishing Color of After, is a story about family, love, and the magic and mystery of the moon that connects us all.
« Emily X.R. Pan’s brilliantly crafted, harrowing first novel portrays the vast spectrum of love and grief with heart-wrenching beauty and candor. This is a very special book. » ―John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down
« Magic and mourning, love and loss, secrets kept and secrets revealed all illuminate Emily X.R. Pan’s inventive and heart-wrenching debut. » ―Gayle Forman, bestselling author of If I Stay and I Was Here
« A lovely, lyrical exploration of how a poignant Chinese myth might play out in a contemporary setting. » ―Kirkus
« Expansive, third-person chapters—including some from the adults’ perspectives—and snippets of lore create a contemporary telling with an otherworldly, age-old feel in this cleverly conceived novel. » ―Publishers Weekly
« Emily X.R. Pan beautifully depicts grief in all its complexities: the numbing sadness, the rage, the confusion, and, most hauntingly, the joy. » ―Bustle.com
Emily X.R. Pan is the New York Times bestselling author of The Astonishing Color of After, which won the APALA Honor Award and the Walter Honor Award, received six starred reviews, was an L.A. Times Book Prize finalist, and was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, among other accolades. NBC News called the novel “moving and poetic” and the Wall Street Journal named it as one of the top twelve books of the season. Emily is also co-creator of the Foreshadow anthology. She currently lives on Lenape land in Brooklyn, New York, but was originally born in the Midwestern United States to immigrant parents from Taiwan.
Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird. Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to stay with her maternal grandparents who she has never met. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. As Leigh grieves, she uncovers family secrets, forges a new relationship with her grandparents, and tries to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life.