From the acclaimed author of This Place Is Still Beautiful comes an evocative, achingly romantic road-trip story about grief, diasporic identities, and the deep-buried secrets that haunt us, perfect for fans of Past Lives and The Farewell.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from XiXi Tian’s All The Way Around The Sun, which releases on September 30th 2025.
Stella Chen’s life ground to a halt when her brother unexpectedly passed away a year ago. Raised together by their grandmother for years in the Chinese countryside before rejoining their parents in the United States, his absence destroys the connective tissue in her family. With another jarring move her senior year, from rural Illinois to unfamiliar surroundings in San Diego, she is left alone and adrift in her family’s suffocating silence and the void of unanswered questions her brother left behind.
So when Stella’s parents force her to join her estranged childhood friend Alan Zhao for a college tour all over California, Stella dreads it. Alan is a reminder of everything Stella wishes she could be—popular, gregarious, unburdened—and a reminder of how lost she is.
As this road trip takes Stella and Alan down beautiful coastlines and through fraught family dynamics, Stella can’t help but feel the spark of why she and Alan were once so close. Before long, they find themselves pulled into each other’s orbits, forcing unspoken feelings and long-hidden truths into the light.
Evening comes. Nai Nai is in the kitchen, prepping dinner. She pulls aside the curtain to the courtyard, her hands covered in flour. “Let’s clean up. You two are filthy.”
You take the bathroom, which has a showerhead and a sloped floor where the water drains away. Nai Nai and I bathe in the courtyard, where she fills two big tureens with water. The cool water feels wonderful as it evaporates off my skin. Nai Nai rubs a citrusy-smelling shampoo into my hair.
“Dirt everywhere,” she scolds.
I throw my head back and take in the sun-streaked sky, as pink as the mimosa flowers. Nothing is better than an outdoor bath. I hate washing up in our new bathroom at Mama and Baba’s house. Tiled and sterile and nothing to see when you look up.
“Next time we take a bath, the frogs can be with us,” I say.
“Mm,” she hums noncommittally. She hands me a rough-textured towel so I can dry off.
I shake my hair so it flings droplets of water everywhere.
Nai Nai laughs. “Silly girl.” She asks me to get rid of the dirty water while she sets the table.
I pour the water into the garden. It seeps into the rich black earth.
We eat ravenously at the dinner table.
“I’m thinking about the frogs,” Nai Nai says carefully when we’re almost done. “Don’t you think they would be happier if you let them go into the pond?”
My head jerks up from my bowl. “They’re our pets,” I protest. I look to you.
You shake your head. “Do we have to?” you ask.
“You don’t have to,” Nai Nai says. “It’s your choice. But maybe the frogs miss their home. Maybe they don’t think it’s fair for you to have taken them somewhere new where they don’t
know anybody.” Nai Nai never raises her voice, not like our parents. She never scolds or disciplines. Instead, she provides commentary, but with enough suggestive flavor so that you feel her disappointment deep into the soles of your feet.
You look at me, upset. My face flushes red in shame.
“We didn’t mean to,” I say.
“I know,” she says gently. “But you can let them go back.”
I glance to you for direction. In everything, I always still defer to you, the one who knows best, the one who speaks for both of us.
Your face wrestles with the decision, but in the end, your sense of responsibility wins out. “Okay,” you say at last. “But can we wait a little bit after dinner?”
Nai Nai nods.
We go into the courtyard to check on the frogs as Nai Nai cleans up. They are quiet and watchful, as if they know they are close to freedom. I take one finger and slowly stroke the top of one frog’s slimy head. Its eyes blink. It opens its mouth and croaks.
“Be good, froggy,” I tell it.
After it gets fully dark outside, we take the bucket outside and Nai Nai follows us. The moon shines in an almost full coin. Against the horizon, the artificial city lights glow in the distance, giving the deep teal-blue sky a pale-colored rind, like the edge of a watermelon.
The pond is completely still. We stand at the road, right before the banks begin to slope toward the water.
“We can let them go here,” Nai Nai says. “Frogs will always find water.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, looking up at her.
“I’m sure,” she says. “They’ll be just fine.”
You pour the water out carefully. For a moment, the frogs seem stunned, but then one of them croaks and they all start hopping madly down the banks. They hit the water with bright
moonlit ripples and disappear. I watch the lagging frogs leap around until all of them are gone. The bucket is empty, and the night is quiet.
I feel sad.
“Nai Nai,” I say, “how come the frogs get to stay here at home but we have to leave? I want to stay too.”
A flash of surprise flickers across her face before she quashes it. “America is your home now, mei mei. With Baba and Mama.”
In three weeks, we will have to get on a plane back to Illinois. The next time we come back, everything will be different.
We stay outside until the song of the cicadas makes us sleepy.
We hold hands in the time before childhood ends.
