| International Standard Book Number |
9781668075234
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| International Standard Book Number |
1668075237
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| Personal Name |
Savitch-Lew, Abigail, author.
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| Title Statement |
Livonia chow mein : a novel / Abigail Savitch-Lew.
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| Edition Statement |
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
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| Imprint |
New York, NY Simon & Schuster, 2026.
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| Physical Description |
xi, 354 pages : maps ; 24 cm.
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| Summary, Etc. |
In 1978, two tenements on Livonia Avenue in Brownsville burn to the ground, killing one resident and displacing dozens of others. It remains unclear who set the buildings ablaze, but the survivors are convinced the culprit is Mr. Wong. Who exactly is Mr. Wong, and what allegedly drove him to this extraordinary act of violence, is the question that consumes this novel as it plunges into four generations of Wong family history. First is Koon Lai, an immigrant who runs a Chinese restaurant on Livonia Avenue; second, his son Richard, a man desperate for his own chance at the American Dream; and third, Jason, a poet who seeks his escape in the bohemian counterculture of the 1970s, but finds himself an unwitting participant in Brooklyn's gentrification. In the 21st century, Jason's daughter Sadie returns to Brownsville as a journalist, determined to unravel the mystery of what happened decades earlier on the night the buildings blazed. Joining together the present and the past is the community organizer Lina Rodriguez Armstrong, who was also displaced by that fire and who has spent the intervening years fighting for the rights of Brownsville's residents and organizing a Livonia Avenue community land trust.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Chinese Americans Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Intergenerational relations Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Family-owned business enterprises Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
American Dream Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Topical Term |
Arson investigation Fiction.
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| Subject Added Entry - Geographical Term |
Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) Fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Detective and mystery fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Historical fiction.
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| Index Term-Genre/Form |
Novels.
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