The Leavers by Lisa Ko

Publisher: Algonquin Books
Publication Date: May 2nd 2017
Pages: 352

Deming Guo is an eleven year old boy, living with his mother Polly, in New York City, and they live in a crowded Bronx apartment with Polly's boyfriend, his sister, and his nephew, who is Deming's surrogate brother. Deming's mother is an undocumented Chinese immigrant, and when she goes to her job at a nail salon in the morning, she doesn't return home, leaving Deming Guo with friends of his mother untill she might return. She doesn't, and Deming is adopted by his new American parents Peter and Kay, who move him from the Bronx to a small upstate New York town,  they rename him Daniel Wilkinson in their efforts to make him over into their version of an “all-American boy.

Of course he is always questioning where and why his mother went missing, until he is old enough to start a search for himself. During the story, he leaves voicemail messages on his mom's phone, until she someday might hear them, which eventually she does. In the second part of the story, when Deming is a young adult, we find out his mom's side of the story, which leads to China, where she now lives. And then Deming steps on a plane to find his mother and to connect the dots in his mother's disappearance years back.

The Leavers is a novel about a very actual topic; the deportation of undocumented immigrants who are sent back from the USA to their home country, which often leaves their children alone back in the USA while the parents are deported, or the other way around, which happens much now with Cambodian. Mexican, and Central Americans under the Trump administration.
The book is alternating between Deming's point of view in the first half and his mother's at the second half, and some mixed in the end. I found most of the story entertaing and interesting, but at some point the book lacked sleep and was a bit repetitive. 
But further on the story was very moving, I love the Chinese culture that is the red line of the book, and also original and different, so if you are in for a book like that, this is the one for you!