The Wangs Vs. the World
Jade Chang, 2016
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780544734098
Summary
Meet the Wangs, the unforgettable immigrant family whose spectacular fall from glorious riches to (still name-brand) rags brings them together in a way money never could.
Charles Wang is mad at America. A brash, bighearted immigrant businessman who built a cosmetics empire and made a fortune, he s just been ruined by the financial crisis.
Now all Charles wants is to get his kids safely stowed away so he can go to China and attempt to reclaim his family s ancestral lands and his pride.
Charles pulls Andrew, his aspiring-comedian son, and Grace, his style-obsessed daughter, out of schools he can no longer afford. Together with their stepmother, Barbra, they embark on a cross-country road trip from their foreclosed Bel-Air home to the upstate New York hideout of the eldest daughter, disgraced art-world it-girl Saina.
But with his son waylaid by a temptress in New Orleans, his wife ready to defect for a set of 1,000-thread-count sheets, and an epic smashup in North Carolina, Charles may have to choose between the Old World and the New, between keeping his family intact and finally fulfilling his dream of starting anew in China. (From the publisher.)