A sweeping debut novel about first love, complicated family dynamics, and the pernicious legacy of racism.
This Place Is Still Beautiful is a luminous, captivating story about identity, sisterhood, and how our hometowns are inextricably a part of who we are, even when we outgrow them..
As the sisters navigate This unexpected summer, an explosive secret threatens to break apart their relationship, once and for all.
For Margaret, the summer couldn\'t possibly get worse, until she crosses paths with someone she swore she\'d never see again: her first love, Rajiv Agarwal.
Meanwhile Margaret is infuriated with Annalie\'s passive acceptance of what happened.
For Annalie, This was meant to be a summer of new possibilities, and she resents her sister\'s sudden presence and insistence on drawing negative attention to their family.
Especially once Margaret\'s own investigation begins to make members of their community uncomfortable.
Instead, her sister and mother would rather move on.
She expects outrage.
When their house is vandalized with a shocking racial slur, Margaret rushes home from her summer internship in New York City.
Margaret looks just like their mother, while Annalie passes for white and looks like the father who abandoned them years ago, leaving their Chinese immigrant mama to raise the girls alone in their small, predominantly white Midwestern town.
Seventeen-year-old Annalie is bubbly, sweet, and self-conscious, whereas nineteen-year-old Margaret is sharp and assertive.
The Flanagan sisters are as different as they come.
Pan, with crossover appeal for readers of Brit Bennett\'s The Vanishing Half and Celeste Ng\'s Everything I Never Told You .
Perfect for fans of Tahereh Mafi, Jandy Nelson, and Emily X.
R.
A sweeping debut novel about first love, complicated family dynamics, and the pernicious legacy of racism
