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Monica Tsai spends her days analyzing data for a new computer program that seeks to connect strangers with the world around them. But one day the very program she's helping to build pings a result for her beloved grandmother Yun's long-estranged cousin: a photograph of two women in Shanghai. One of them, Louise Sun, is a digital archivist who holds keys to Yun's past, and whose gift of a single pencil upends Monica's day-to-day. Monica's discoveries of a hidden family history are exquisitely braided with her grandmother Yun's own memories, recounting her time growing up in the Phoenix Pencil Company in the 1940s. While Japan invades China, Yun's cousin Meng moves in with them-but when the government discovers their family can Reforge a pencil's words, magically reviving the memories they hold, the cousins are separated and forced into a life of betraying stories in order to survive. Combining the cross-generational family saga and epistolary form of Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being with the uplifting magic of Matt Haig's The Midnight Library, King's stunningly layered debut novel asks: who owns a story? The answers and secrets that surface on the page have the unerasable power to unite or threaten Monica, Yun, and their most valued relationships for good