Sojourners by Te-Ping Chen: Release Date, Story and 1920s Hawaiian Setting

Te-Ping Chen is returning with Sojourners, her debut novel and first book since the acclaimed 2021 story collection Land of Big Numbers.

Set in Hawaiʻi beginning in 1920, the historical novel follows two sisters whose lives take sharply different paths after one of them disappears. The story will move from a small community on the Big Island to a rapidly changing Honolulu, combining a family mystery with a coming-of-age story about sisterhood, identity, grief and reinvention.

Sojourners is scheduled to be released in the United States on June 1, 2027, by Pantheon, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Here is everything readers should know about its story, setting and author.

Sojourners release date and book details

The release date, publisher, page count and ISBN come from the official Penguin Random House listing for Sojourners. The publisher also lists an ebook edition for the same date, although page counts vary by format.

Because the book is still months from publication, details such as its final format specifications can change. The June 1, 2027 date is the currently announced U.S. publication date.

What is Sojourners about?

Sojourners begins on Hawaiʻi Island in 1920. Sisters Kana and Leilani Kau grow up in a small village several miles from Hilo, where their father owns the community’s only store. He inherited the business from his own father and expects his daughters to carry it into the next generation.

Kana and Leilani are half-Chinese and half-Hawaiian, and their family is part of an island society being reshaped by migration, plantation labor and a developing tourist industry. Their early lives appear happy and secure until Leilani vanishes after leaving church and is eventually presumed dead.

The disappearance transforms the Kau family. While her parents struggle with their grief, the still-teenage Kana assumes responsibility for the family store. Her future seems to have been decided for her until she hears a singer on the radio whose voice sounds uncannily like Leilani’s.

The singer is performing at one of Honolulu’s leading hotels. Despite her practical instincts, Kana travels to the city to see the woman for herself. That decision changes the direction of her life, launching a story that unfolds across years as both Kana and Honolulu encounter profound change.

The premise gives Sojourners an immediate mystery, but the publisher’s description suggests that the missing-sister question is the doorway into a broader family saga rather than the novel’s only concern. It is a story about the lives people inherit, the identities they construct and whether the past ever releases its hold completely.

Why the 1920s Hawaiian setting matters

Hawaiʻi is more than a picturesque backdrop in Sojourners. The novel begins at a moment when the islands’ economy, population and cities were changing, allowing the Kau sisters’ personal transformations to unfold alongside a larger historical shift.

The book’s village setting connects the family to a local business passed between generations. Honolulu represents something different: movement, performance, tourism and the possibility of becoming someone new. Kana’s journey from the Big Island to the city therefore carries both a literal and symbolic meaning.

The multicultural world described in the novel also reflects the complicated history of plantation-era Hawaiʻi. The National Park Service notes that Japanese workers made up much of the plantation labor force and worked alongside Korean, Filipino, Portuguese, Puerto Rican and other laborers. These communities did not merely supply labor; they helped shape modern Hawaiʻi while organizing for better wages and working conditions. The National Park Service’s historical overview provides useful context for the period.

Honolulu itself was becoming an increasingly diverse commercial center. By the 1920s, its Chinatown had again become a thriving district where Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Portuguese communities overlapped, according to the National Park Service’s history of Honolulu’s Chinatown.

Chen has described the novel as an ode to this period of Hawaiian history, when tourism was new and beginning to alter the islands. That makes the setting central to the book’s questions about change: who benefits from it, who is expected to adapt and what can be lost when a place is remade for outsiders.

Sisterhood, identity and reinvention

At the center of Sojourners is the relationship between Kana and Leilani. One sister disappears; the other becomes tied more closely to the family, its grief and its livelihood. Then a voice transmitted across the radio destabilizes everything Kana believes she knows.

That radio detail is especially compelling. In a novel about movement and modernization, new technology carries a voice from Honolulu to an isolated listener and makes a previously impossible search possible. It connects the private mystery of one family with the broader arrival of a modern, mass-media world.

Chen told People that the book is about sisters, motherhood and family, adding that those subjects made the novel feel personal. She also said the cover’s sense of mystery reflects the unknowability that can exist even in our closest relationships. The comments accompanied the first public cover reveal.

That combination should appeal to readers who enjoy historical fiction in which the setting actively shapes the characters rather than simply surrounding them. The novel appears positioned between an intimate family drama, a disappearance mystery and a sweeping portrait of a society in transition.

Who is Te-Ping Chen?

Te-Ping Chen is a fiction writer and journalist. She is the author of Land of Big Numbers, a 2021 short-story collection exploring contemporary China and the lives of people connected to it.

Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Granta and Tin House. Chen is also a Wall Street Journalcorrespondent based in Philadelphia and previously worked in Beijing and Hong Kong. More information about her journalism and fiction is available through Chen’s official biography.

Land of Big Numbers was named a Washington Post notable work of fiction and appeared on Barack Obama’s list of favorite books of 2021. Sojourners will be Chen’s first novel, expanding her fiction into a multigenerational historical narrative set far from the contemporary Chinese settings most closely associated with her debut collection.

Is Sojourners part of a series?

No series has been announced. Sojourners is currently presented as a standalone novel.

Its story unfolds over a span of years, but that does not mean readers will need to wait for a sequel. The publisher describes it as a sweeping coming-of-age story about two young women rather than the opening installment in a larger series.

Should you add Sojourners to your reading list?

Sojourners is worth watching for readers who enjoy historical novels centered on complicated families, sisters separated by circumstance and women trying to create lives beyond the futures selected for them.

The disappearance at the center of the premise offers a strong narrative hook, but the 1920s Hawaiian setting may be the novel’s biggest draw. Fiction about this era often treats Hawaiʻi primarily as an exotic destination. Chen’s novel instead promises to examine a place from within, through a multiracial local family experiencing the rise of tourism and the legacy of the plantation economy.

That perspective could make Sojourners one of the more distinctive historical-fiction releases of 2027. Readers of character-driven family sagas, literary mysteries and novels about rapidly changing communities should keep it on their radar.

Frequently asked questions

When will Sojourners by Te-Ping Chen be released?

Sojourners is scheduled for publication in the United States on June 1, 2027.

What is Sojourners about?

The novel follows Kana and Leilani Kau, two half-Chinese, half-Hawaiian sisters growing up on the Big Island beginning in 1920. After Leilani disappears and is presumed dead, Kana later hears a singer on the radio whose voice sounds like her missing sister’s and travels to Honolulu in search of answers.

Is Sojourners Te-Ping Chen’s first book?

It is Chen’s first novel, but not her first book. She previously published the short-story collection Land of Big Numbers in 2021.

Where is Sojourners set?

The story begins in a small village near Hilo on Hawaiʻi Island and later moves to Honolulu. It unfolds across multiple years beginning in 1920.

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