The Year She Left Us: A Novel

"In a first novel etched with grief and conviction, Kathryn Ma, winner of the 2009 Iowa Short Fiction award, delves into the experiences of an adopted girl — one of the Lost Daughters of China, the “Unhappy Outcome of the One Child Policy.” Rescued from an orphanage in Kunming, raised in San Francisco, Ari is, at 18, dismissive of her adoptive mother, curious about her father, devoted to her grandmother and bedeviled by “abandonment issues.” Ma addresses the complicated questions of what family means with clarity and empathy."