The Family Chao

Lan Samantha Chang

Feb 2022 · RB Media · Narrated by Brian Nishii

About this audiobook

The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao restaurant’s delicious Americanized Chinese food for thirty-five years, content to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. Whether or not Big Leo Chao is
honest, or his wife, Winnie, is happy, their food tastes good and their three sons earned scholarships to respectable colleges. But when the brothers reunite in Haven, the Chao family’s secrets and simmering resentments erupt at last.

Before long, brash, charismatic, and tyrannical patriarch Leo is found dead—presumed murdered—and his sons find they’ve drawn the exacting gaze of the entire town. The ensuing trial brings to light potential motives for all three
brothers: Dagou, the restaurant’s reckless head chef; Ming, financially successful but personally tortured; and the youngest, gentle but lost college student James. As the spotlight on the brothers tightens—and the family dog meets an
unexpected fate—Dagou, Ming, and James must reckon with the legacy of their father’s outsized appetites and their own future survival.

Brimming with heartbreak, comedy, and suspense, The Family Chao offers a kaleidoscopic, highly entertaining portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with the dark undercurrents of a seemingly pleasant small town.

About the author

Lan Samantha Chang was born, 1965, and raised in Appleton, Wisconsin. She is the daughter of Chinese parents who survived the World War II Japanese occupation of China and later immigrated to the United States. Chang attended Yale University, first as a premedical student and then as an East Asian studies major. She went on to earn an M.F.A. at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. In her fiction, she focuses on the fragility of family relationships and the Chinese American immigrant experience. Chang's "Pipa's Story" was selected for Best American Short Stories 1994. Her books include All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost (W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), Hunger (W. W. Norton & Company, 1998), Inheritance (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004).