Winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction One morning, Deming Guo''s mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon and never comes home. Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid examination of borders and belonging. It''s the story of how a boy comes into his own when everything he loves is taken away, and how a mother learns to live with her mistakes.