Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. There's a bit of writing advice in today's

interview. It's with novelist Jennifer Haig talking about her novel Rabbit Moon. It's a family

drama centered around a young American woman living in Shanghai who gets into a car accident.

And in this interview with here and now Scott Tang, Haye gets into how this affects

her separated parents and her sister and the familial bond between them all. And in talking about

all of that, Hayes drops this nugget of wisdom, that for her, a novel begins, quote,

with the moment after which nothing will ever be the same.

Her interviews coming up after the break.

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The new novel, Rapid Moon, by Jennifer Haig, starts with a hit-and-run accident pre-dawn in Shanghai. The story is largely

about the pedestrian victim, an American college-age woman named Lindsay Litvak. And then her parents,

who are divorced, they hurry over from the States to the Chinese hospital where she's in a coma.

Meanwhile, her younger sister is at a summer camp in the New England woods waiting for word.

Lindsay's accident scars a family that is already fractured.

Jennifer Haig is author of several acclaimed novels, including Mercy Street,

which won the Mark Twain American Voice for Literature Award,

and she joins us. Jennifer, good to have you.

Good to be here, Scott.

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