College dropout Hai doesn t know how to face the future until a chance meeting with elderly widow Grazina changes his life, in this achingly beautiful novel about chosen family and second chances One summer evening in the town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on a bridge, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond. The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which our lives are changed by the most unexpected of people. When Hai takes a job at a diner to support himself and Grazina, his fellow workers become the family he didn t expect to find. United by desperation and circumstance, and existing on the fringes of society, together they bear witness to each other s survival. This is an unforgettable story of unexpected friendship and how far we would go to possess one of life s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.