Real Americans

• "Mesmerizing"—Brit Bennett
• "A page turner.”—Ha Jin
• "Gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft"—Andrew Sean Greer
• "Traverses time with verve & feeling."—Raven Leilani

Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing & effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class & striving, race & visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, & finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made, & if so, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?