Book excerpt: This novel following a Korean adoptee, her white mother, and her best friend through two decades is “an intense and compelling read . . . terrific” (Kirkus Reviews). What is considered a family, and who gets to define it? In 1964, as racial tension simmers in America, Catherine and Jonathan adopt a baby girl from Korea. This unconventional choice brings disapproval from Catherine’s family—which creates an even closer bond between her and her daughter. Narrated in alternating chapters by Catherine, her adopted daughter Min, and Min’s best friend Laura, Scissors, Paper, Stone spans twenty years of love, loss, and the complex reality of female relationships. As Min grows up, we watch as she comes out as a lesbian and learns to embrace her heritage, and after she and Laura take a summer road trip together, the shifts in their friendship force all three women to examine the assumptions they’ve been living by and to make choices about the roles they want to play in each other’s lives. “Davis writes with rare insight and compassion about the evolving American family and the struggle to belong . . . a wise and affecting novel.” ―Hilma Wolitzer, author of An Available Man