Exclusive Cover Reveal: “Homeseeking” by Karissa Chen

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Homeseeking, the highly-anticipated debut novel by Karissa Chen, which will be published by Putnam on January 7th, 2025. You can pre-order your copy here.

An epic and intimate tale of one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland.

A single choice can define an entire life. Suchi first sees Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood when she is seven years old, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossoms into love, but when Haiwen secretly enlists in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, Suchi is left with just his violin and a note: Forgive Me.

Sixty years later, recently widowed Haiwen spots Suchi at a grocery store in Los Angeles. It feels to Haiwen like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back. In the twilight of their lives, can they reclaim their past and the love they lost?

Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting at the crucible of their lives. From Shanghai to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States, neither loses sight of the home they hold in their hearts.

Here is the cover, designed by Vi-An Nguyen.

Karissa Chen, author: One of the aspects of my novel that was most important to me was the structure: the story, spanning seventy years, is told in the alternating perspectives of two childhood sweethearts, with one narrative moving forward in time and one narrative moving backwards, meeting in the middle. While the structure first and foremost represents the two different ways the characters deal with trauma and loss, the duality is also a nod to the ways they’ve had to reinvent and juggle their identities as they’ve migrated to different places and searched for new homes.

When I thought about an ideal cover, it was one that somehow could convey all of this — no easy feat! And yet, I think this cover has done so beautifully. I love the two different trees that represent Shanghai and Los Angeles, two of the characters’ homes, encircled by an entwined ring (featured in the book) which symbolizes the endlessness of the two characters’ bond. And then the two birds in silhouette separated at opposite corners! In search of something, home or each other, perhaps. I love the colors, particularly the grainy blue of the background. And as a font nerd, I love this font. Bold yet elegant. The cover is everything I wished for and more, and I hope it’s one that not only captivates readers when they see it on bookshelves, but also becomes more meaningful to them once they’ve finished the book.

Vi-An Nguyen, designer: It felt really important to capture how gorgeously big and sweeping Homeseeking feels—it spans across a lifetime, and continents! The big teal sky represents that wide scope. The two kinds of trees symbolize the two disparate settings, but they’re connected by the gold ring, a nod to a moment in the story but also an emblem of the connective power of love.