Lucky Seed: A Novel

Succession meets Crazy Rich Asians in this chaotic, darkly funny romp about the lengths a wealthy family will take to ensure the birth of a male heir from the gay black sheep of their clan. An intergenerational family saga inspired by the author's own fatherhood journey as his real-life family's mandatory suggestion.

The billionaire Sun Clan of Greater Los Angeles is your typical American family: power-struggling aunties, emasculated uncles, scheming cousins, scandalous secrets, and a seductive fortuneteller on retainer. But at the end of each combative day, the Suns are chained together with golden handcuffs. Yet strange storms are a-brewing. Their matriarch Roses Sun is grappling with an existential crisis: to produce a male heir that bears the clan's surname. She fears that if her generation is the one in which their esteemed lineage ends, they will be punished as "hungry ghosts" in the afterlife—an ancient but very real Asian superstition. Faced with this terrifying fate, Roses summons her favorite nephew Wayward. Believing him to possess the "lucky seed," Roses presents Wayward with a mandatory suggestion: to father a baby boy who will inherit everything. When the other members of the Sun Clan catch wind of Roses's plot, all hells break loose. Wayward's family will now clash like never before in an epic war over the future of the Suns...if there is a future at all. Yet through the chaos, Wayward sees opportunity. What if he can leverage all the conflict into a solution for his problematic family? What if he can reunite the Sun Clan by healing them? And what if the tumultuous Suns can finally learn how to love each other for the first time?

About the Author

Born to immigrants in Monterey Park, California, Justinian Huang studied English at Pomona College and screenwriting at the University of Oxford. He is based in Los Angeles with Swagger, a Shanghainese rescue dog he adopted during his five years living in China. He entered the literary world with his debut novel, the critically-acclaimed THE EMPEROR AND THE ENDLESS PALACE.