**A NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION "5 UNDER 35" HONOREE
"There is so much heart in these pages, so much wisdom on how we love.
This book had me in its orbit, from beginning to end." - Weike Wang,
author of Joan is Okay**
Holding Pattern. Noun.
- A state of suspended progress.
- The awkward way your mother tries to hug you now that you live with
her. Again.
Kathleen Cheng has blown up her life. She's gone through a humiliating
breakup, dropped out of her graduate program, and left everything
behind. Now she's back in her childhood home in Oakland, wondering
what's next.
To her surprise, her mother isn't the same person Kathleen remembers. No
longer depressed or desperate to return to China, the new Marissa Cheng
is sporty, perky, and has been transformed by love. Kathleen thought
she'd be planning her own wedding, but instead finds herself helping her
mother plan hers--to a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur.
Grasping for direction, Kathleen takes a job at a start-up that
specializes in an unconventional form of therapy based on touch. While
she negotiates new ideas about intimacy and connection, an unforeseen
attachment to someone at work pushes her to rethink her
relationships--especially the one with Marissa. Will they succeed in
seeing each other anew, adult to adult?
As they peel back the layers of their history--the old wounds, cultural
barriers, and complex affection--they must come to a new understanding
of how they can propel each other forward, and what they've done to hold
each other back. Brilliantly observant, tender, and warm, Holding
Pattern is a hopeful novel about immigration and belonging,
mother-daughter relationships, and the many ways we learn to hold each
other.
