What We Left Unsaid is a heartwarming family story, about a trio of adult Taiwanese-American siblings driving down Route 66 to visit their parents just before their mother undergoes a major surgery. The Grand Canyon is as much a character as the siblings themselves; they’d taken a trip to the Grand Canyon when they were children, but something happened at a sketchy gas station that made their parents turn back before they reached it. Their mother’s request that they come visit by car on a route that passes by the Grand Canyon is clearly also a request for healing, not just the strained relationships between the siblings themselves, but the unresolved trauma from whatever happened at that gas station all those years ago.

Li gently peels back the siblings’ relationships layer by layer, revealing the sources of the rifts between them as well as the love that keeps going beneath it all. I love how Li pulls back the curtain on the racism and discrimination that Asian-Americans face, from some of the more subtle micro-aggressions that put Bonnie, Kevin, and Alex on their guard, to the flat-out threats that make them and their parents stiffen in fear. Li sets the present-day scenes post-COVID, and so there’s a lot of additional layers to the racism here that are uncomfortably familiar and real.

I also like how Li explores how each sibling’s role in the family helps shape their respective responses to events: Bonnie as the responsible eldest child and eldest daughter, Kevin and Alex both believing they’re the ones their parents see as the screw-up of the family. All these things are shaped by both parental attitudes and societal ones, and I like how their dynamic shifts constantly throughout the story.

Finally, I love the details about the road trip itself. I’m not American and haven’t driven down Route 66 myself, so while I’ve heard of some of the stops, I haven’t ever threaded them all together in the same way an American reader may. I enjoyed learning about the various stops, their characters, and their histories. But more importantly, I love thinking about Asian Americans who’ll read this, and feel connected to their country’s history through the Chu family’s unique lens.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.