This place Is still beautiful by Xixi TianPublication Date: 2022
Ages 13 and up; Gr.9 and up.
A sweeping debut novel about first love, complicated family dynamics, and the pernicious legacy of racism. The Flanagan sisters are as different as they come. Seventeen-year-old Annalie is bubbly, sweet, and self-conscious, whereas nineteen-year-old Margaret is sharp and assertive. Margaret looks just like their mother, while Annalie passes for white and looks like the father who abandoned them years ago, leaving their Chinese immigrant mama to raise the girls alone in their small, predominantly white Midwestern town. When their house is vandalized with a shocking racial slur, Margaret rushes home from her summer internship in New York City. As the sisters navigate this unexpected summer, an explosive secret threatens to break apart their relationship, once and for all.