Shaker Heights, Ohio, one of the US’s first planned
communities, was Celeste Ng’s home from age 10 through high
school. It is the setting for her second novel, Little Fires
Everywhere, and its prescribed orderliness is reflected in
the life of the Richardson family. Journalist Elena Richardson and
her husband, attorney Bill, and their four teenage children are a
seemingly perfect family in a big, affluent home.
The open-mindedness on which Elena prides herself will be tested
by the arrival of Mia Warren, a vagabond photographer, and her
15-year-old daughter, Pearl, who rent a house Elena inherited from
her parents. Gradually the Richardson kids are attracted by Mia’s
creativity, and Pearl is attracted by the structure and stability
of the Richardson home. As the offspring are spending more time in
one another’s homes, the parents take opposite sides in a custody
case. An infertile couple who are friends of the Richardsons have
taken in and hope to adopt a baby who was abandoned at a fire
station. The baby’s Chinese mother, with Mia’s support, now wants
the baby back.
Different worlds collide in the novel, with fiery (literally and
figuratively) consequences.
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