Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

 

This timely novel concerns the lives of two families in Los Angeles and how their lives intersect.  The Matthews family is an African-American family.  Shawn and his sister came to live with his aunt and his cousin Ray when their parents were unavailable.  Shawn grew up considering Ray his brother.  Now Ray is coming out of prison after a long stretch and Shawn is hoping to help him navigate the transition he made himself after some prison time.  Their lives were changed forever when Shawn's sister was killed in an incident in a convenience store.

The Park family have Korean heritage.  Grace is the daughter who still lives at home and who is a pharmacist at the family store.  She has a sister who lives in the heart of Los Angeles and is estranged from the family, especially their mother.  When Grace leaves the store one night with her mother and the mother is gunned down in front of Grace, everything changes.

It is touch and go whether her mother will make it but she survives.  As she is recuperating in the hospital, the family secret comes out.  Grace's mother was the woman who shot Shawn's sister all those years ago.  The incident rocked Los Angeles especially when the mother received a minimal punishment.  She changed her name and the family moved and she has hidden in plain sight all these years.  Now her secret is out and suspicion falls on Shawn's family.  Did one of them take revenge after all these years for the earlier shooting?  

Cha has written a tense novel about how events can both separate and intersect those who would normally never come in contact.  The desire for revenge is understandable yet the act would be as wrong as the one that set this crime in motion decades before.  How each family reacted to the earlier tragedy and this new one is discussed and the question of when forgiveness is appropriate is explored.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.