Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

Our November 2019 Book of the Month

Our selection for November Book of the Month is one that will grip you immediately and keep you reading late into the night. Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha is compelling not only due to a genre that generates its own forward motion, but more because your compassion for and understanding of the characters draws you into their lives and never lets you out even after the last page. If the book is ultimately about the present we are experiencing it is a clear representation of how we, like the characters in this brilliant novel, cannot escape our personal or societal traumas.

As Americans we have been made aware of the deep racial fissures in our nation. This book examines our own city of Los Angeles, forcing us to see the reality of how far we have not yet gone in addressing our diverse population and the divides among us. Book Clubs will have a lot to discuss, as it is a continuation and expansion on the themes raised in many of the acclaimed novels of the past year. This Book of the Month selection by Cha, a native of LA, asks readers to address our collective history in order for all of us to do better and be better.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A powerful and taut novel about racial tensions in Los Angeles, following two families ― one Korean-American, one African-American ― grappling with the effects of a decades-old crime…

In the wake of the police shooting of a black teenager, Los Angeles is as tense as it’s been since the unrest of the early 1990s. But Grace Park and Shawn Matthews have their own problems. Grace is sheltered and largely oblivious, living in the Valley with her Korean-immigrant parents, working long hours at the family pharmacy. She’s distraught that her sister hasn’t spoken to their mother in two years, for reasons beyond Grace’s understanding. Shawn has already had enough of politics and protest after an act of violence shattered his family years ago. He just wants to be left alone to enjoy his quiet life in Palmdale.

But when another shocking crime hits LA, both the Park and Matthews families are forced to face down their history while navigating the tumult of a city on the brink of more violence.