LIVONIA CHOW MEIN

Before sunrise one morning in 1978, in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, those living on a Livonia Avenue block are jolted awake first by smoke, then by fire, which engulfs two tenement buildings, killing one resident and displacing dozens of others.

Over the ensuing four decades, the block stays vacant as Brownsville undergoes transition from a crime-ridden, crack-infested neighborhood in the 1980s to a potential boon for urban gentrifiers at the turn of the 21st century. A stalwart constant throughout these changes is Lina Rodriguez Armstrong, a community organizer who is among the survivors of the fire, which she and other residents are convinced was deliberately set by Richard Wong, a Chinese entrepreneur whose immigrant father once owned a restaurant on the block. It’s history that piques the interest of Sadie Chin, a 23-year-old reporter for New Gotham whose family once lived in Brownsville “and was now so afraid of it.” As she ingratiates herself with people on her neighborhood beat, she’s jolted when one of the long-time residents accuses her of being the granddaughter of the same Richard Wong, whom he calls “a murderer.” At first, she thinks it’s a random senior moment. But she finds out from her father, poet Jason Chin, that Wong was a fake name used by her ancestors to bypass restrictions on immigration and that his father did own the Livonia Avenue building that housed the family’s restaurant. This news galvanizes Sadie into digging deeper into both the history of that building and the fire that destroyed it. She seeks help in this process from a wary Lina, who’s trying to mobilize her neighbors to battle a posh real-estate firm wanting to build what it considers “affordable housing” on the still-vacant stretch of Livonia. Savitch-Lew shows prodigious narrative gifts in this debut novel, weaving Sadie and Lina’s tension-filled transactions in the present with the life stories of the Wong family as it makes its uneasy and often heartbreaking way through a 20th century of world wars, economic upheaval, and racism as it’s enforced by institutions and perpetrated between individuals. The Wong chronicles interrogate what we’ve known as the American dream of individual achievement while fortifying the possibility of fulfilling our collective responsibilities to each other.

A vivid, savory blend of family saga, cultural history, and detective story, rich with urban life and lore.