Flashlight by Susan Choi

 When Louisa was just 10, her Japanese-Korean father drowned off a beach in Japan. Or so she remembers. Dad, Serk, an American immigrant with a fractured family had been cobbling a life with Anne, a WASP-y curious yet distant woman, with family challenges of her own. When it all splinters, Louisa’s relationship with her mother grows icier. But the landscape recasts when new information about the family’s past surfaces from a most unexpected place. In brilliant and nuanced writing, Choi delivers a masterpiece. She plays with the title “flashlight,” showing how limited brightness can create its own unknown dark shadows.