MISS ME FOREVER

A Nepali immigrant comes to America seeking safety and a lost sister.

Tulsi Gurung, the hero of Cross’s debut novel, arrives in Erie, Pennsylvania, from a refugee camp in Bhutan as a teenager. Language is a struggle (Cross handles his early days of broken English well), and he misses his older sister, Susmita, whose whereabouts are unknown to him. But he has the support of his grandfather and a handful of classmates who introduce him to parties, sports, and American-style competitiveness. More complications emerge as he settles in, particularly anti-Asian racism. But in his 20s he finds a job at a casino and a kind of refuge in coworkers there: Rebecca, a single mother and fellow dealer whom he tries to help escape a violent ex-husband, and Chandra, who becomes increasingly enmeshed in some dangerous off-book gambling activity that threatens to upend Tulsi’s efforts to pursue a degree. To be an American, especially an immigrant, Cross suggests, is to be regularly courting danger and separation—in which regard Susmita’s disappearance is just one example. The prevailing mood is melancholy, understandably: Tulsi feels “as though his whole life has been nothing more than a timeline of losses with empty spaces in between.” Even so, Cross writes with a graceful simplicity, and what initially appears to be a gentle, familiar tale of assimilation gets grittier and more intense in its closing pages. There are some cloying notes, particularly in the pining letters written by Susmita (“I write with the understanding that these words will not reach you”) that are interspersed between chapters, and Tulsi’s character at times feels overly simplified into good-hearted naïveté. But the overall arc of the story captures the quiet agony of seeking the people and places that represent home.

An ably rendered coming-to-America story.