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From #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline comes a boldly original reimagining of an astonishing true story: two sisters in nineteenth-century North Carolina—Kline’s own distant relatives—who married world-famous conjoined twins from Siam.
When Chang and Eng 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 Addie sees in the twins’ fame a chance to reclaim her future. Sallie, 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.
Praise
“Only Christina Baker Kline could take the famous and perplexing story of Chang and Eng Bunker and transform it into a tender, insightful, and uplifting novel. The Foursome is a riveting exploration of marriage, community, adversity, and the ways women navigate a world in which they have little power. I have loved all of Kline’s books, and this is her best yet.”
–Alice Elliott Dark, author of Fellowship Point
“When you start The Foursome, Christina Baker Kline’s magnificent new novel about the two sisters who married conjoined twins Chang and Eng, it feels, at first, like you’re stepping into a Diane Arbus photograph. But Kline, a master of alchemy, takes her reader on a journey full of awakenings. This is a story that goes deeply into the lives of two nineteenth-century Southern women, revealing the contradictions at the heart of all relationships — and of America itself. This book is both a feat of the imagination and a radical treatise on empathy.”
–Caitlin Shetterly, author of Pete & Alice in Maine
