Because Donoghue uses a 5-year-old narrator to describe what he and his mother suffered during years of captivity, the horrors they endured are starkly but poetically revealed. Cristina Henríquez's new novel chronicles this budding romance with tenderness, making it seem that young love makes anything possible. As the parents adapt to a new life, they watch warily as a young neighbor befriends Mirabel. Arturo and Alma Rivera have emigrated from Mexico to get their brain-injured teenage daughter, Mirabel, the help she needs. Everyone who comes to the United States brings a complicated story. The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez (Knopf, $25). As the adults drift apart, they're further rocked by an accident and Hurricane Andrew. Sea Creatures by Susanna Daniel (Harper Perennial, $15) Scandal has driven a small family - an insomniac, her violently somnambulant husband, and their mute son - from Illinois to Miami. In confident prose, Chung elegantly interweaves mythology and memory, the past and the present.
Her sister, Janie, the dutiful daughter, sets out to find Hannah before their father dies. Hannah, a college student, has disappeared. Fractured by secrets, a Korean family must find their way back to harmony in Chung's 2012 novel. Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung (Riverhead, $16).
