From Mo'orea, a tiny volcanic island off the coast of Tahiti, a French biologist sends her teenage daughter to live with her ex-husband. By the time fifteen-year-old Pia arrives at her father Stephen's luxury apartment in Manhattan and meets his new, younger wife, she has been shuttled between her parents' disparate lives. Moving from a South Pacific "paradise," where rage still simmers against the colonial government and its devastating nuclear tests, to the extreme inequalities of twenty-first century New York City this is an unforgettably moving novel about nation, race, class, and family.
|