The Fox Wife

The Fox Wife (2024) is a standalone fantasy and folktale novel written by New York Times best-selling author Yangsze Choo. Steeped in ancient Chinese folklore, The Fox Wife details how Snow, a fox spirit, pursues the man who murdered her infant daughter. The Fox Bride joins Choo’s novels The Ghost Bride (which also became a Netflix series) and The Night Tiger in receiving critical acclaim. In its first months of publication, the novel was named a Best Book of February by TIME, a Favorite Fiction book of 2024 by NPR, and a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by LitHub and BookPage. Choo is a Harvard graduate and fourth-generation Malaysian of Chinese descent. She uses her extensive knowledge of Asian folktales and myths to explore resilience, lost love, and how women negotiate their presence in impossible circumstances.

This guide refers to Henry Holt and Company e-book edition, distributed by Google Play Books and published in 2024.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss suicidal ideation, off-page suicide, violence, death, murder, and attempted sexual assault.

Plot Summary

At the Qing dynasty’s twilight hour, Snow, a fox spirit, hunts her daughter’s murderer to the city of Dalian. For two years, the Manchurian photographer known as Bektu Nikan has escaped Snow’s grasp, but she has finally received a lead.

Elsewhere in Mukden, Bao, an elderly detective with the power to detect lies, is called onto the scene of a murder, where a woman was found dead. With few clues to guide him, Bao sets out to search for the woman’s identity. He questions the people of the pleasure district and finds that the woman was part of a brothel and had been hired for a tea party hosted by the wealthy Mr. Wang. According to a young boy who last saw her, the girl, known by the pseudonym Chunhua, was in the company of a fox.

The Huang family has hired Snow to take care of their grandmother, Tagtaa. Snow meets Tagtaa’s grandson, Bohai, and his wealthy friends Chen and Lu. At a dinner event, she encounters their esteemed comrade, Shirakawa. She recognizes Shirakawa as a fellow fox, a childhood friend she knew as Shiro. He has information about Bektu: He is no longer in China and is, in fact, in Japan.

Bohai and the others prepare to return to Japan for their medical studies. Tagtaa worries about Bohai because of the Huang family curse: Historically, when a second son is born to the Huang family, the firstborn son will die because of the people with no shadows, and the second son will inherit the shop. Bohai’s father is expecting a child from his concubine, which will make Bohai the doomed first son. Tagtaa plans to accompany her grandson to Japan, and Snow goes with her.

Bao, meanwhile, travels to Wu Village. He encounters Chunhua’s family. Chunhua’s younger sister recounts how her father blamed a fox cub she’d saved for Chunhua’s disappearance. A photographer named Bektu Nikan, she explains, had come for a white fox skin, and their local hunter, Jiang, had managed to hunt a cub for him. They fatally injured the cub, and later, a woman appeared, asking for its return. The woman, the younger sister believes, was a fox.

In Japan, Snow is caught unaware when she is reunited with her former husband and fellow fox, Kuro. Despite Shiro’s warnings, she tracks down Bektu and confronts him but hesitates and fails to kill him. Devastated, Snow returns to Kuro’s home, where Shiro preys on her distress and tries to woo her.

Bao investigates Bektu Nikan, which leads him to Mr. Wang. He learns that Mr. Wang had kept a woman captive to be his third wife, but she escaped from him. Mr. Wang hires Bao to find her and provides a photograph. Bao finds an unlikely lead in a pleasure house’s bookkeeper’s granddaughter, who tells him that the woman had gone to Mr. Wang’s party to look for Bektu. She informs him that the woman then left for Dalian, and Bao follows suit.

Bektu is found dead the day after his encounter with Snow. With the police investigating foreigners in the country, Snow and the others decide to return to China, and Kuro accompanies them. On the steamer, tensions run high. Chen corners Snow on the deck, demanding that they die by suicide. She refuses, and that night, Chen mysteriously disappears. By the time they return to China, Chen is pronounced dead, and his family demands to interview his companions.

Bao has reached Dalian. After a bout of sickness, he goes to the Huang medicine shop for medication. The shop mistress’s servant is the woman who had escaped from Mr. Wang. Bao learns that she and the shop mistress are bound to return from Japan that day. By the time Bao arrives at the port, the women have already returned home. He encounters an old acquaintance at the administration office who enlists his help to uncover Chen’s killer.

When the Huang family arrives at the mansion, Bao recognizes Tagtaa, the woman he had loved in his youth. As the interviews proceed, Mr. Chen incarcerates Snow, who escapes. She confronts the elder Chen. As Shiro and Kuro try to save her, their combined influence is too much for the humans to bear, and a fire erupts. Shiro and Snow manage to escape, but Kuro must manage on his own. Bao, meanwhile, revisits the Huang medicine shop, and when they see the smoke coming from the Chen mansion, he and Bohai leave together.

Bohai grows incredibly frantic, as Bao has no shadow. When they arrive at the mansion, his anxiety reaches a fever pitch. He stabs Bao and harms Kuro, who saw the attack and came to protect Bao. The three of them return to the medicine shop, where Snow is bidding farewell to Tagtaa. Kuro and Bao are not fatally injured and eventually recover. Bohai is sent to a private sanatorium, and Snow tells Bao that Lu killed both Bektu and Chen. Kuro and Snow reconcile. Later, they depart on a journey to Korea, where they hope to move beyond their grief.