Banyan Moon (Compact Disc)
Staff Reviews
Taking place across different periods of time in Vietnam and Florida, "Banyan Moon" follows a multi-generational family of Vietnamese-American women and the secrets they keep and sacrifices they make for their loved ones. Told in three different perspectives, follow Minh's journey from a naive, love struck teenager to a determined woman fighting to save her children from the shadow of the Vietnam War; Huong's struggle with her marriage and ever devolving relationship with her daughter; and Ann with her eternal struggle between happiness and practicality. These women are tied together through their history and love for each other, and you'll find a piece of yourself in each of their stories. This is a beautiful book about immigration and loss and the unique bonds of motherhood.
— EmmaJuly 2023 Indie Next List
“Banyan Moon is a remarkable debut that follows Vietnamese-American Ann, her mother, grandmother, and generations of women who came before. Thai peels open family secrets like an onion to reveal truth, healing, love and friendship.”
— Patience Allan-Glick, Underground Books, Carrollton, GA
Description
"A riveting mother-daughter tale." -- Elle
"A celebration of life in all its forms and a joy to read." -- Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Exiles
A sweeping, evocative debut novel following three generations of Vietnamese American women reeling from the death of their matriarch, revealing the family's inherited burdens, buried secrets, and unlikely love stories.
When Ann Tran gets the call that her fiercely beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. In the years since she's last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect life--a beautiful lake house, a charming professor boyfriend, and invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne and good taste--but it all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Huơng.
Back in Florida, Huơng is simultaneously mourning her mother and resenting her for having the relationship with Ann that she never did. Then Ann and Huơng learn that Minh has left them both the Banyan House, the crumbling old manor that was Ann's childhood home, in all its strange, Gothic glory. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past and their uncertain futures, while trying to rebuild their relationship without the one person who's always held them together.
Running parallel to this is Minh's story, as she goes from a lovestruck teenager living in the shadow of the Vietnam War to a determined young mother immigrating to America in search of a better life for her children. And when Ann makes a shocking discovery in the Banyan House's attic, long-buried secrets come to light as it becomes clear how decisions Minh made in her youth affected the rest of her life--and beyond.
Spanning decades and continents, from 1960s Vietnam to the wild swamplands of the Florida coast, Banyan Moon is a stunning and deeply moving story of mothers and daughters, the things we inherit, and the lives we choose to make out of that inheritance.
"Heart-shatteringly beautiful. Banyan Moon is a love letter to keepers of secrets, to motherhood, family and survival." -- Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child
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