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From #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline comes a boldly original reimagining of the astonishing true story of two sisters in nineteenth-century North Carolina — Kline's own distant relatives — who married world-famous conjoined twins from Siam.
When Eng and Chang Bunker arrive in Wilkes County in 1839, they're not just a curiosity—they're a sensation. Everyone is eager to learn whether the salacious rumors about them are true. Within months, the twins have opened a general store, bought land, and begun building a plantation. Now, word has it, they're looking for wives—and in a place that thrives on gossip and legacy, their ambitions set the community on edge.
Sarah and Adelaide Yates, daughters of a once-prominent local family brought low by scandal, are drawn into their orbit. Bold, beautiful Adelaide sees in the twins' fame a chance to reclaim her future. Sarah, quiet and observant, isn't so sure. When the twins' lives become entangled with theirs, they must navigate loyalty, longing, and identity in a world where everything—including race, class, and gender—is rigidly defined.
Spanning five decades and unfolding against the backdrop of a fractured nation hurtling toward war, The Foursome is both intimate and epic: a story of love and constraint, identity and reinvention. With piercing insight and emotional precision, Kline brings to life a forgotten chapter of American history and the complex, boundary-defying marriages at its center.
"Avoiding sensationalism and hewing closely to the historical record, Kline subtly and often poetically documents the small, daily choices that shape these lives. It's remarkable." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A profound and moving treatment of what could have been a tabloid topic." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Emotionally moving, hard to put down … Written with compassion and sensitivity, [The Foursome] gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at the once perceived scandalous lives of the two Yates-Bunker families." ―Library Journal (starred review)
"Christina Baker Kline is a masterful storyteller with an extraordinary subject in The Foursome. Chang and Eng can literally never be apart, which means that their wives—Addie and her sister Sarah—are also held in an impossible proximity to each other. What a wonderful study of intimacy of all kinds, of love and tolerance, of growing together and growing apart. In short, of what it is to be human." —Ann Napolitano, bestselling author of Hello, Beautiful
"The Foursome explores the complexities of marriage, sisterhood, and raising children at a time and place where conformity was the norm and change was just beginning to stir. Kline weaves a beautiful tapestry of love, doubt, identity, and resilience in a world that left little room for differences. I really loved this book." —Sadeqa Johnson, New York Times bestselling author of Keeper of Lost Children
This information about The Foursome was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Jerry Bauer
Christina Baker Kline is the author of ten novels, including the New York Times bestsellers Orphan Train, The Exiles, and A Piece of the World. Her novels have received the New England Society Book Award for Fiction, the Maine Literary Award, and several bookseller awards, among other prizes. Born in England, she was raised in the American South and Maine. She lives in New York City and in Southwest Harbor, Maine.
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