Chemistry

Three years into her graduate studies at a demanding Boston university, the unnamed narrator finds that her one-time love for chemistry is more hypothesis than reality. Tormented by failed research and reminded of her delays by peers, her advisor, and, most of all, her Chinese parents—who have always expected nothing short of excellence—she also faces a non-scientific question: a marriage proposal from her devoted boyfriend, a fellow scientist whose path through academia has been relatively free of obstacles, and with whom she cannot make a life before finding success on her own. Eventually the pressure mounts so high that she must leave everything she thought she knew about her future, and about herself, behind.

Confronted with the question "What do I really want?", she must grapple with choices that cannot be solved by equations. Over the next two years, the heroine learns the formulas and equations for a different kind of chemistry—one in which reactions cannot be quantified, measured, and analyzed, and one that can be studied only in the mysterious language of the heart.

Chemistry follows a young Chinese American woman who must discover what she really wants before her life can truly begin.

Endorsements

Winner of the twenty-seventh annual John C. Zacharis First Book Award