Julia Win

Julia Win is one of the two narrators in the novel “The Art of Hearing Heartbeats” by Jan-Phillip Sendker. Born in New York in 1968, Julia is a law school graduate. She is beginning a new job when she decides to fly to Thailand. It has been four years since her father, Tin Win, abandoned the family and returned to his homeland. Mysteries and rumors about him abound, including that he lived a double-life. Julia wants to get to the bottom of it all. She is critical, skeptical, and uncompromisingly set against her father’s actions, especially when she finds an old love letter from her father to a woman in Thailand. She wonders if he ever loved his family in New York at all.

When Julia Win arrives in her father’s hometown of Kalaw, she meets a mysterious man named U Ba at a teahouse. U...