Inconvenient Daughter
A Novel
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Illuminates with cutting truth the layers of longing and grief which underlie a transracial adoption . . . sharply written, intense, and page-turning.” —Randy Susan Meyers, bestselling author of Waisted
Rowan Kelly knows she’s lucky. After all, if she hadn’t been adopted, she could have spent her days in a rice paddy, or a windowless warehouse assembling iPhones—they make iPhones in Korea, right? Either way, slowly dying of boredom on Long Island is surely better than the alternative. But as she matures, she realizes that she’ll never know if she has her mother’s eyes, or if she’d be in America at all had her adoptive parents been able to conceive.
Rowan sets out to prove that she can be someone’s first choice. After running away from home—and her parents’ rules—and ending up beaten, barefoot, and topless on a Pennsylvania street courtesy of Bad Boy Number One, Rowan attaches herself to Never-Going-to-Commit. When that doesn’t work out, she fully abandons self-respect and begins browsing Craigslist personals. But as Rowan dives deeper into the world of casual encounters with strangers, she discovers what she’s really looking for.
With a fresh voice and a quick wit, Lauren J. Sharkey dispels the myths surrounding transracial adoption, the ties that bind, and what it means to belong.
A Finalist for Foreword Review’s 2020 INDIES Book of the Year Award in Adult Fiction—Multicultural
“Stirring . . . a moving account of Rowan’s difficult reckoning with her identity. This is an adept portrayal of the long shadow of abuse and the difficulty of being an adoptee.” —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Sharkey's stirring if uneven debut, a transracial adoptee of Korean descent endures a crisis of identity. At the novel's start, 24-year-old Rowan Kelly is at the ER to report a sexual assault, and a question about her family medical history leads her to reflect on her complicated feelings about being adopted, as well as self-esteem issues and abusive relationships. From there, the narrative jumps back to Rowan's first day of elementary school, when another student mocks Rowan for looking different from her mother. Though Rowan has a positive relationship with her mother as a child on Long Island, it begins to fracture once Rowan enters high school and pursues a relationship with an older boy. Frustrated by her mother's rules, Rowan escapes to college in Pennsylvania, where she meets fellow student Hunter, who cuts Rowan off from all of her friends and family, making her entirely dependent on him, and is physically abusive. Sharkey gradually circles back to the opening scene in the ER, describing the legacy of Hunter's abuse and the persistent voice of self-criticism in Rowan's head. Though things start slowly, Sharkey achieves a moving account of Rowan's difficult reckoning with her identity. This is an adept portrayal of the long shadow of abuse and the difficulty of being an adoptee.
