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About Relative Strangers

From the acclaimed author of A Good Family comes a timely spin on Sense and Sensibility, a twenty-first-century family drama featuring two half-Korean sisters, their ex-hippie mother, multiple messy love affairs and one explosive secret that could ruin everything. Amelia Bae-Wood’s life is falling apart. Unemployed, newly single and completely broke—for reasons she hasn’t told anyone yet—she finds herself hitchhiking across California to deal with the fallout of her mother’s eviction from the family estate. Amelia needs somewhere to live and time to figure out what to do with the rest of her life, so moving with her mother and sister to Arcadia, the cancer retreat center where her sister volunteers, seems like as good an idea as any. Amelia’s sister, Eleanor, has too much on her plate, including being caught up in a court battle with a man who claims to be their half brother from Seoul and their late father’s only son—a secret love child from his Korean youth—who’s fighting for a piece of everything that belongs to the Bae-Wood women. And when Amelia adds herself to Eleanor’s list of problems, Eleanor must figure out what to hold on to—and when to let go—before things starts to unravel. A witty, wry and enormously entertaining retelling, the sisters’ journey of self-discovery as they reshape their lives gives this classic tale a modern, feminist twist, as it touches on themes of blended families, race, class and wealth.