THIS PLACE IS STILL BEAUTIFUL

When their home is targeted in a racist attack, two sisters must deal with the aftermath and consequences.

Nineteen-year-old Margaret and 17-year-old Annalie Flanagan both grew up in the same Illinois town, raised by their Chinese mother after their Irish American father left when they were young. Despite these shared experiences, it often seems like they couldn’t be more different. While Annalie wants to blend in and keep her head down, Margaret keeps finding new causes to champion and new wrongs to right. People constantly comment on how they don’t look alike, as Margaret appears more Asian. When Margaret leaves for college in New York City, Annalie finally has the chance to live outside her sister’s shadow, until a racist incident brings Margaret back to town. As the sisters grapple with what it means to be mixed race and Asian American in a largely White Midwestern town, when to speak up, and whose expectations they should meet, they also struggle to navigate their relationship with each other and the ways in which they are different—and similar. About much more than just racism toward Chinese Americans, this novel deftly tackles the precarious moments surrounding the end of high school and the beginning of college, when romantic and familial relationships are complicated, changing, and all-consuming.

Quiet yet powerful, complex, and grounded in the reality that nothing will ever be completely resolved.