The Phoenix Pencil Company A novel

Connections and communication are the crux of writer and software engineer King's remarkable debut novel. Part speculative, part multigenerational family epic, part historical record, part coming-of-age romance, it is, like the mythical titular phoenix, all magic. King adroitly intertwines two voices: Swarthmore student Monica Tsai, who's working on EMBRS, a promising "sparking connections" app, and Monica's grandmother, Yun, who is recording her fading memories in epistolary installments addressed to her cousin Meng, from whom she's been separated for decades. How Monica and Yun preserve their stories reflects vast divides and intimate similarities. Monica (mostly) journals virtually. Yun's memories are accessed via a "Reforged pencil" using an extraordinary power shared by her family's women to conjure what the pencil has previously written. As Yun declines, Monica's yearlong attempt to reunite the estranged cousins becomes possible when EMBRS links her to Princeton undergrad Louise Sun. Meanwhile, Yun's guilt-tinged longing for Meng only grows, sending her back decades to record Shanghai's history, the Japanese occupation, WWII, the communist takeover, a temporary escape to Taiwan, and eventual U.S. immigration. Monica, still unaware of her powers, will need to learn her family's complex legacy before it's too late. King radiantly explores memory, storytelling, archiving, history, and the subjective unreliability of all that we think we know.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With King as a recipient of a Reese Book Club Litup Fellowship, this imaginative first novel is getting a lot of attention.

King's powerful debut blends magical realism, family history, and the power of storytelling in a multigenerational tale of memory and identity. College freshman Monica Tsai is caught between her rigorous computer science studies program and caring for her grandmother, Yun, who has Alzheimer's. When Monica stumbles upon a family secret--pencils made by her grandmother's company in Shanghai during WWII possess the mystical ability to "Reforge" written words into lived memories--she unearths a hidden family history of espionage, betrayal, and survival spanning from wartime China to modern-day Massachusetts. As Monica pieces together the past, she forms an unexpected bond with Louise, an ambitious archivist with her own stake in the story, and grapples with the implications of her tech professor's digital journal project, EMBRS, which echoes the Reforging ability in an unsettling way. King nimbly navigates themes of intergenerational trauma, privacy, and the evolving nature of storytelling to craft a novel that is simultaneously intimate and expansive. Though some elements, particularly the romance and EMBRS subplots, feel underdeveloped, the novel's heart lies in its thoughtful exploration of who decides what history to preserve. It's a poignant magical realist tale that's sure to find fans. Agent: Seth Fishman, Gernert Co. (June)

DEBUT Software engineer King demonstrates a compelling voice in both literary historical fiction and technological stories with her first novel. It opens with second-generation Chinese American computer science student Monica Tsai trying to reunite her grandmother Yun with Yun's long-lost cousin Meng. As children, Yun and Meng helped their mothers run the Phoenix Pencil Company in Shanghai, where they discovered they could reveal all of the words a pencil previously wrote, through a process called reforging. This unlikely ability is spun out in Yun's youthful diary entries, which recount being separated from Meng during World War II, then being forced to spy for the Chinese government. Her narrative alternates with Monica's diary entries about developing a social-networking software and connecting with her family history while caring for her grandparents. King unifies complex topics into a gripping narrative, exploring tensions amid memory, privacy, history, and technology. The novel risks becoming impersonal in balancing so many complex themes, but King avoids this by maintaining a close attention to the humanity of its characters. VERDICT Using diary entries to explore the power and danger of sharing one's story, this epistolary, dual-timeline debut will appeal to readers interested in historical fiction, particularly about China during World War II and Chinese American experiences.--Conner Williams