Others Were Emeralds

Poet Leav (Self-Love for Small-Town Girls) makes her adult fiction debut in this heartrending novel about how one Asian Australian’s insecurities influence her relationships. The daughter of Cambodian immigrants who fled the Khmer Rogue, 17-year-old Ai grows up in the small town of Whitlam, Australia in the 1990s, where she and her friends feel the brunt of anti-immigrant tensions. Ai becomes close friends with the beautiful Brigitte, who is French Vietnamese. She teaches Ai how to cook while Ai teaches her how to bookbind; Brigitte also briefly dated Bowie before he became Ai’s first boyfriend. Then, Ai overhears a conversation between Brigitte and her mother that confirms Ai’s self-doubts about her looks and place in Bowie’s heart, which are spurred on by classmate Sying, who often voices her irritation with Brigitte. After a confrontation the girls have with a pair of racists during an outing at the lake, Bowie and Brigitte meet with tragedy, an event that continues to haunt Ai even as she graduates and follows her dream of working with textiles as a college student in Sydney. Leav skillfully captures the details of senior-year high school life, but is even better in depicting Ai’s parents’ stories of surviving war and persecution and Ai’s teenage experiences with microaggressions and outward racism. It’s a resonant portrayal of how paranoia and jealousy can turn relationships sour. (Sept.)