The Forest for the Trees

Winner of the 2023 Big Moose Prize

A dark comedy about a clash of cultures and generations, a biracial coming-of-age story, and a psychological thriller about inherited trauma from an award-winning writer and début filmmaker. The year: 1959. The place: suburban New York City. When Chinese businessman Leo Lin loses his livelihood, his Caucasian American wife Margaret replaces him as sole breadwinner, creating a cascade of domestic crises that mirrors the Cold War raging between the United States and Communist China. Their oldest daughter Prudence elopes. Denise, the middle daughter, escapes into French literature and her prophetic imagination. Lorraine, the youngest, takes refuge in the Catholic Church and the Mickey Mouse Club.

But it is when Leo’s fresh off the boat mother Nai-nai comes to live with them that the family unit threatens to rupture. The final blow is delivered by Leo’s imperious father Guoxin who reveals a terrible secret that has kept him prisoner of his past and all the Lins hostage to his unremitting sense of guilt and shame. The Forest for the Trees alternates between chapters of a novel and scenes of its adaptation as a screenplay, offering the reader a hybrid experience as well as a liminal approach to understanding the book’s all-too-human characters torn between family duty and personal desire.