How do we live so that we are satisfied? How can people connect during moments of loneliness? This is the story of Joan Liang, a woman who moves across the world to America, and in trying to answer these questions builds a wildly original life.

Joan’s life is a series of unexpected events: she never thought she would live in California, nor did she expect her first marriage to implode—especially as quickly and spectacularly as it did. She definitely did not expect to fall in love with an older, wealthy American man and become his fourth wife and mother to his youngest children.

Joan and her children grow older, and one day she makes a drastic change: she opens the Satisfaction Café, a place where customers can find connection through conversation. With humor and grace, Joan creates a space for meaningful relationships and constructs a lasting legacy.

Vivid, comic, and profoundly moving, The Satisfaction Café is a novel about found family, the joy and loneliness that come with age, and how we can seek satisfaction at any stage of life. This is a novel of tremendous pleasures: sentences that teem with rich observations, wonderful plotting, and, in Joan, a protagonist for the ages.
 
Contributor Bio(s)
 
Kathy Wang is the author of Family Trust, Imposter Syndrome, and The Satisfaction Café. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School, and lives in the Bay Area. 
 
Key Selling Points
National bestseller! The Satisfaction Café debuted at #20 on the USA TODAY bestseller list.

Rave reviews: The Satisfaction Café was named a best book of the summer by People, Today, and Oprah Daily. The book received raves from Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Minnesota Star Tribune, plus a shout-out from Wally Lamb in the New York Times. Impactful essays by the author were featured in Lit Hub and the Wall Street Journal.

Major national publicity: Ron Charles raved about Satisfaction Café on CBS Sunday Morning and Ann Patchett recommended the book on PBS Newshour.

Gorgeous praise from fellow novelists: Ann Patchett, Jonathan Franzen, Emily Habeck, Mary Beth Keane, Courtney Sullivan, Phil Klay all enthusiastically endorsed this book. Kathy’s hero Anne Tyler has a no-blurb policy but read and loved and posted about it on Facebook.

Paperback perfect for book clubs: With a protagonist for the ages, this is the perfect book club pick in paperback.

Ann Patchett's Pick and indie love: Patchett selected this for the Parnassus First Editions Club and supported on social and with a well-attended event at the store. It's also an Indie Next Pick.