Rabbit Moon - by Jennifer Haigh (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit and run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. The accident unearths a deeper fissure in the family: the shocking event that ended the Litvaks' marriage and turned Lindsey against them. Estranged from her parents, she has confided only in her younger sister, Grace, adopted as an infant from China. As Claire and Aaron struggle to get their bearings in bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai, the newly prosperous "miracle city," they face troubling questions about Lindsey's life there, in which nothing is quite as it seems."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

A tense, propulsive drama set in Shanghai, about a fractured American family, secret lives, and the unbreakable bond between two sisters, from the New York Times bestselling author of Mercy Street

Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit and run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

The accident unearths a deeper fissure in the family: the shocking event that ended the Litvaks' marriage and turned Lindsey against them. Estranged from her parents, she has confided only in her younger sister, Grace, adopted as an infant from China. As Claire and Aaron struggle to get their bearings in bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai, the newly prosperous "miracle city," they face troubling questions about Lindsey's life there, in which nothing is quite as it seems.

With Jennifer Haigh's trademark psychological acuity, Rabbit Moon is a taut, suspenseful story about the ties of marriage that no divorce can sever, and the fabled red thread that pulls two sisters together across time and space. Haigh proves yet again that she is "an expertly nuanced storyteller...her work is gripping, real, and totally immersive" (New York Times).

Review Quotes

"Haigh's achievement in Rabbit Moon is to combine the intellectual heft of a philosophical novel with the readerly pleasures of a thriller...Haigh has an acute appreciation of moral ambiguity, especially regarding wounded characters who struggle to find a way forward. Honest about self-destruction but optimistic about redemption, Haigh's novel ponders the big questions but doesn't settle for the faux comfort of easy answers."--Chapter 16

"A tense tale of secrets, estrangement and self-discovery."--People Magazine

"I ripped hungrily through Rabbit Moon... impressive for its scope, ambition, vibrant characters and its unsettlingly graphic, resonant story."--Joan Frank, Washington Post

"A portrait, told in time jumps, of a family fractured by nothing so much as their own profoundly human flaws."--NPR

"Capturing both the possibilities of reinvention and the scars carried from a traumatic past, Haigh's searing novel examines the interplay between choice and chance."--Booklist

"A gripping novel of suspense, infused with great empathy."--Library Journal (starred review)

"Haigh keeps this family drama firing on all cylinders, and she succeeds at capturing Shanghai's dizzying effect on her characters. Readers will be transported."--Publishers Weekly

"Jennifer Haigh renders her characters and contemporary Shanghai with compelling richness and exhilarating precision. This taut, devastating novel about a young woman's dark fate--at once avoidable and inexorable--will remain with you long after you put it down."--Claire Messud

"Gripping, propulsive and entirely credible, Rabbit Moon succeeds in multiple dimensions and gets Shanghai right. Brava!"--Gish Jen, author of Thank you, Mr. Nixon

About the Author

Jennifer Haigh is the author of seven best-selling, critically acclaimed works of fiction. Her first, Mrs. Kimble, won the PEN Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Her latest, Mercy Street, was named a Best Book of 2022 by the New Yorker and won the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. A Guggenheim fellow and graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she lives in Boston.