Allison King’s debut novel, The Phoenix Pencil Company (2025), is a work of historical and contemporary fiction with elements of magical realism. The story follows Monica Tsai, a Chinese American computer science student who uses a social media data-mining project to track down her grandmother’s long-lost cousin from wartime Shanghai. Her search uncovers a secret family power called Reforging, a magical ability to relive the memories stored within the graphite of a pencil. As her grandmother’s own memory fades, Monica must confront a painful and complex family history. The novel explores themes of Telling the Truth to Heal Family Wounds, Reconciling Human Connection in an Era of Technology, and Preserving Versus Weaponizing a Person’s Story.

The novel, an early selection for Reese’s Book Club’s LitUp fellowship, draws from the author’s own background as a software engineer and her family’s history with a pencil company. The narrative unfolds across two timelines, contrasting Monica’s modern-day digital world with her grandmother’s youth in 1930s and 1940s Shanghai. The historical plotline is set against the turmoil of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the subsequent Chinese Civil War, which forces the family to navigate occupation, espionage, and displacement, ultimately leading to their separation.

This guide is based on the 2025 William Morrow first edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of bullying, self-harm, graphic violence, gender discrimination, sexual violence, rape, sexual content, pregnancy loss or termination, cursing, illness, and death.

Plot Summary

The novel alternates between the present-day diary of college sophomore Monica Tsai and the wartime memories of her grandmother, Wong Yun, who writes to her estranged cousin, Chen Meng, using a secret family power called Reforging.

Monica, a computer science student at Swarthmore College, has spent a year searching for Meng, who grew up with her grandmother at the Phoenix Pencil Company in Shanghai during the 1930s and 1940s. Her search leads her to EMBRS (Electronic Memory Bank Enabling Radical Sharing), a campus research project that connects people by analyzing social media data. EMBRS matches Monica’s queries to a post by Louise Sun, a Princeton undergraduate who photographed herself with an elderly woman in Shanghai who turns out to be Meng. When Monica meets Louise at a frozen yogurt shop in New Jersey, Louise hands her a single black pencil from the Phoenix Pencil Company that Meng sent for Yun. Monica is disappointed, expecting a written message.

When Monica returns home to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for her grandmother’s 91st birthday, her grandfather reveals that her grandmother has a memory-loss condition doctors suspect is Alzheimer’s-type. Monica decides to take the fall semester off to care for her grandparents, who raised her after both her parents left during her childhood. She accepts a paid remote position on EMBRS and begins exchanging daily messages with Louise, who becomes her primary emotional support.

Meanwhile, Yun writes to Meng, recounting their shared past. In 1937, 10-year-old Meng and her mother arrive at the family pencil company in Shanghai’s International Settlement, a district governed by foreign powers and largely insulated from the Japanese invasion of China. The cousins clash at first but gradually bond over a family secret: The women of their family carry a power called Reforging. When a Reforger pushes a sharpened pencil heart into a vein on her wrist, the graphite melts into her bloodstream, allowing her to experience the memories and emotions of whoever wrote with the pencil. She can then cut the phoenix-shaped scar on her wrist and bleed the absorbed story onto paper, where it rematerializes as text. Yun’s grandmother initially forbids her from learning Reforging, but she relents when she realizes that Yun’s father, a spy for the Chinese Nationalist resistance, may not return from the war.

After Japan occupies the International Settlement in December 1941, an operative named Mr. Gao coerces the family into Reforging coded intelligence messages for the Nationalist underground by threatening to expose Yun’s father. For three years, Yun, Meng, and their mothers carry out this dangerous work while the cousins sustain themselves through a co-written story about two girls with pencil-based superpowers. The war ends in 1945, and the cousins enjoy a brief freedom. When Meng begins dating a boy from school, Yun is consumed by jealousy, secretly steals his pencil, and Reforges his intimate poems about Meng. The betrayal creates a deep rift between them.

As civil war erupts between the Nationalists and Communists, Yun’s family flees to Taiwan while Meng’s family stays in Shanghai and sides with the Communists. The cousins exchange pencils containing their shared story and part. In Taiwan, the Nationalists fund a new Phoenix Pencil Company designed for surveillance. Yun and her mother Reforge used pencils returned through a fake recycling program, extracting the private writings of ordinary citizens. Yun meets Torou Tsai, a young Taiwanese student bound for MIT. During a sexual encounter with Torou, she accidentally discovers a second method of Reforging: Through climax, the absorbed story releases painlessly rather than through cutting. Panicked, Yun pushes Torou away, and he leaves for America.

After learning that Meng burned down the Shanghai pencil company to end the Communists’ surveillance access, Yun convinces Mr. Gao to send her to California to establish a new front. She runs a restaurant, sells pencils, and Reforges the returned ones to extract customers’ writings. Mr. Gao controls her through isolation. After Yun’s mother dies from the toll of excessive Reforging, Yun sets fire to the California house, destroys the remaining pencils, and flees to Boston.

In the present, Yun teaches Monica how to Reforge. A demonstration inadvertently reveals Monica’s confused romantic feelings for Louise. Monica hadn’t planned to come out, but her grandmother responds with quiet acceptance and encourages her to invite Louise to visit. Louise comes to Cambridge, and the visit is warm. The grandparents cheer at her volleyball game, the family plays mahjong late into the night, and Monica and Louise nearly kiss. When Louise asks to interview Yun about her time in Shanghai, however, the woman declines.

With Louise’s encouragement through texts, Monica successfully completes her first Reforging through orgasm and experiences a brief, loving message from her grandmother. Soon after, Yun falls down the stairs in the night and fractures her hip. Louise drives five hours to Cambridge. At the hospital, Yun confesses she once received a desperate letter from Meng asking her to return to Shanghai after Meng’s mother died. Yun never replied to the letter and remains stricken with guilt decades later. After Monica leaves the room, Louise presses Yun for her story again, and Yun asks her to leave. The trust between Monica and Louise is shattered. When Monica accuses Louise of only caring about Meng’s story, Louise retorts that Monica’s own work scraping data without consent is no different and leaves.

Monica discovers that EMBRS plans to sell users’ private journal data, so she writes an entry exposing the project’s misleading origin story and sends it to investors. Her professor furiously accuses her of sabotaging their work and revokes her access. That same night, Monica Reforges Meng’s pencil and learns that Meng has forgiven Yun. She also learns that Meng met Monica’s father, Edward, in Shanghai years earlier and helped him connect with his family history. Meng ends her message on a hopeful note, believing that the next generation lives in a kinder world and that they will carry the power of stories forward.

In Yun’s final chapters, she recounts finding Torou in Boston, telling him the full truth about Reforging, and working with him to create a pencil heart made from elements her body refuses to absorb. When Mr. Gao comes to retrieve her, Yun stabs herself with the un-Reforgeable pencil, producing only blood and no ink. This convinces him she’s lost her power. He declares her useless and leaves. Torou comforts her, telling her she deserves to live her own story.

Weeks after their confrontation, Louise sends Monica a pencil containing a letter that confesses her feelings and reveals she’s taking a semester off to travel to Shanghai. Monica Reforges the pencil, feels the sincerity of Louise’s words, and they reconcile. Monica’s father invites her to visit Shanghai, and Yun asks her to deliver a pencil to Meng now that her message to her cousin is finished.

In Shanghai, Monica meets Meng at a park near the site of the old pencil company. They communicate through translation apps and emojis. At Meng’s request, Monica Reforges Yun’s pencil and experiences the full sweep of Yun’s life. She bleeds the story into a notebook for Meng but retains Louise’s letter within her own body. Meng tells Monica that grandmother’s story was ultimately written for Monica herself.

That evening, Monica meets Louise at the Bund, Shanghai’s historic waterfront. They take a photo and send it to Yun and Meng. Monica kisses Louise for the first time, and they sit together by the river, looking out at the city their families once called home.