Synopsis:

Identical twins Isabella and Hà were born in Vietnam and raised on opposite sides of the world, each knowing little about the other’s existence, until they were reunited as teenagers, against all odds.

The twins were born in Nha Trang, Vietnam, in 1998, where their mother struggled to care for them. Hà was taken in by their biological aunt, and grew up in a rural village, going to school, and playing outside with the neighbors. They had sporadic electricity and frequent monsoons. Hà’s twin sister, Loan, spent time in an orphanage before a wealthy, white American family adopted her and renamed her Isabella. Isabella grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, with a nonbiological sister, Olivia, also adopted from Vietnam. Isabella and Olivia attended a predominantly white Catholic school, played soccer, and prepared for college.

But when Isabella’s adoptive mother learned of Isabella’s biological twin back in Vietnam, all of their lives changed forever. Award-winning journalist Erika Hayasaki spent years and hundreds of hours interviewing each of the birth and adoptive family members and tells the girls’ incredible story from their perspectives, challenging conceptions about adoption and what it means to give a child a good life. Hayasaki contextualizes the sisters’ experiences with the fascinating and often sinister history of twin studies, the nature versus nurture debate, and intercountry and transracial adoption, as well as the latest scholarship and conversation surrounding adoption today, especially among adoptees.

For readers of All You Can Ever Know and American Baby, Somewhere Sisters is a richly textured, moving story of sisterhood and coming-of-age, told through the remarkable lives of young women who have redefined the meaning of family for themselves.

Erika Hayasaki has successfully written Somewhere Sisters as a heartrending personal story about two twin sisters from Vietnam separated at birth, while also shining a light on the complicated and often corrupt business of adoption. She gives a voice to adoptees, examining intercountry and transracial adoption, asking the hard questions that deserve to be acknowledged. I found myself reading this one quickly, not wanting to set it aside, intrigued and enlightened.

We meet Isabella and Hà as infants born in Vietnam in 1998 to a single mother struggling to care for her two children. As her babies become sicker from malnutrition, someone points her in the direction of an orphanage. The orphanage agrees to take Isabella, the healthier of the two, but declares Hà too sickly to accept. The girls’ mother makes the hard decision to leave Isabella at the orphanage and ultimately leaves Hà with a sister in a nearby village. While Isabella is eventually adopted by a wealthy American family and given the name Isabella, Hà is raised by her aunt and her aunt’s partner in the village. Isabella is adopted along with Olivia, a younger girl at the same orphanage who is not related to Isabella but whom Isabella had become close with, the adoptive family agreeing with the suggestion to keep them together.

When Isabella’s adoptive mother eventually learns Isabella has a twin sister, she is determined to reunite the sisters, starting a chain events that will alter not only the sisters’ lives, but the lives of many others touched by their story, as well.