Sylvie graduates from Princeton, starts a high-powered career, and marries the scion of an old-money WASP family, while Amy struggles to pursue her dream of teaching, hampered by a stutter made worse by the attention of others. The sisters form a strong bond as the years progress, with Sylvie’s overachieving capability putting her in a position to protect the timid, loving Amy. The only person not conflicted with Sylvie’s return is Amy, her younger sister, who is merely two years old when Sylvie comes home.
This choice will haunt the Lee family for years, long after Sylvie has returned to their bosom.
Then I understood: I had brought my daughter to a landscape of tears. I held my girl close to me that endless time in the flying machine until we landed in Holland on a black day of excessive water. I did not know it would be nine years until I saw her again. I told myself it was only for a year, and then we would bring her back. But I was twenty-three years old, newly married, newly emigrated, and struggling not to drown in this vast ocean called the Beautiful Country. I wrote to Helena to say I would bring my baby girl in the tenth moon. Sylvie’s Ma resisted, but after a frightening xenophobic assault on the streets of New York City, she decided that it would be best for Sylvie if she went to live with the far-better-off Helena: After having baby Lukas, Helena wanted to solidify her claim to her aunt’s continued presence and care by sending away to America for her cousin’s daughter to be a playmate for her own child. The daughter of Chinese immigrant restaurateurs, Helena is a Dutchwoman of means who went back to her parents’ Chinese hometown to find herself a handsome husband.
Sylvie Lee was raised in the Netherlands by her grandmother at the behest of her mother’s cousin, Helena Tan. Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok is a poignant and suspenseful drama that untangles the complicated ties binding three women-two sisters and their mother-in one Chinese immigrant family and explores what happens when the eldest daughter disappears and a series of family secrets emerge.
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