Vanessa Chan’s The Storm We Made is the latest pick for the Good Morning America book club.
Chan’s debut novel, published Tuesday by Marysue Rucci Books, tells the story of Cecily Alcantara, a Malaysian woman in 1945 whose family is in turmoil because of her previous work as a spy for Japan. A critic for Kirkus praised the book as “a chilling exploration of the costs of human weakness and desire, in a compelling and vividly wrought historical context.”
ABC News journalist Juju Chang talked to Chan on the morning show, introducing her as “the kind of author who can completely transport you to another time and place.”
Chan told Chang, “The Pacific theater, as part of broader World War II history, is really not very much discussed and written down in history. Stories are just stories unless you write them down, so I wrote them down, and hopefully, in this way, they become history.”
Chang noted that Chan’s novel spans genres—spy thriller, love story, literary fiction—and asked the author what she was “going for” in the novel.
“I wanted to tell a very good story,” Chan responded. “When the story first started, I was writing about three children living through a war, but I continued to write this book during the pandemic, and I couldn’t go anywhere, so I decided to give myself a character who could run around and do irresponsible things, and that’s how the spy was born. So it all came together in a mishmash of genres that I hope is entertaining.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
