A novel about family, love, and belonging, set against the backdrops of 1950s New York City and Louisiana, following one young man’s quest to survive an often misunderstood disease, and find love, music, and himself, in the process.

Victor Chin’s life is turned upside down at the tender age of 15. Diagnosed with Hansen’s disease, otherwise known as leprosy, he’s forced to leave the familiar confines of his father’s laundry business in the Bronx – the only home he’s known since emigrating from China with his older brother – to quarantine alongside patients from all over the country at a federal institution in Carville.

Carville is a place of contradictions, of institutional control on the one hand, and freedom from the segregation of the Jim Crow South on the other. Meanwhile, back in New York, Victor’s father’s relationship with his Jewish mistress is becoming more serious. Victor’s elder brother Henry despises her for trying to replace their mother left behind in China, but he himself is in love with a married woman.

At first, Victor is scared not only of the disease, but of the confinement, and wants nothing more than to flee. Between treatments he dreams of escape and imagines his life as a fugitive. But soon he finds a new sense of freedom far from home – one without the pull of obligations to his family, the laundry business, or his mother back in China. Here, in the company of an unforgettable cast of characters, Victor finds refuge in music and experiences first love, jealousy, betrayal, and even tragedy. But with the promise of a life-changing cure on the horizon, Victor’s time at Carville is running out, and he has some difficult choices to make.

Called "a gripping and tenderly executed drama" by the New York Times, King of the Armadillos was inspired by the author's father's real-life experience as a teenage patient at Carville, and was named one of the top 20 books of 2023 by BookBrowse, and best book of summer, 2023 by The Boston Globe, Deep South Magazine, Ms. Magazine, and BookRiot.