Skip to main content

Lucy Tan

Biography

Lucy Tan

Lucy Tan grew up in New Jersey and has spent much of her adult life in New York and Shanghai. She received her B.A. from New York University and her M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was awarded the 2016 August Derleth Prize. Her fiction has been published in journals such as Asia Literary Review and Ploughshares, where she was winner of the 2015 Emerging Writer’s Contest. WHAT WE WERE PROMISED is her first novel.

Lucy Tan

Books by Lucy Tan

What We Were Promised
by Lucy Tan - Fiction

After years of chasing the American dream, the Zhen family has moved back to China. Wei, Lina and their daughter, Karen, join an elite community of Chinese-born, Western-educated professionals who have returned to a radically transformed city. One morning, in the eighth tower of Lanson Suites, Lina discovers that a treasured ivory bracelet has gone missing. This incident sets off a wave of unease that ripples throughout the Zhen household. Lina is haunted by the circumstances surrounding her arranged marriage to Wei and her lingering feelings for his brother, Qiang. When Qiang reappears in Shanghai after decades on the run with a local gang, the family must finally come to terms with the past and its indelible mark on their futures.