Last Night at the Telegraph Club

In 1954 San Francisco, Lily Hu is beginning to recognize feelings she has little space to name. Her growing closeness with Kathleen Miller leads her to the Telegraph Club, a lesbian bar that opens a door onto a world beyond the expectations of school and family. Yet finding that world does not free Lily from the pressures surrounding her. Anti-Communist suspicion threatens her Chinese American community, and the possibility of her father’s deportation makes every choice feel more precarious. The novel follows Lily’s first love and emerging sense of self as she weighs belonging, family loyalty and the risks of claiming a life others have not imagined for her.