Banyan Moon
A Read with Jenna Pick
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4.3 • 135 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A TODAY Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick
"A riveting mother-daughter tale." — Elle
"Radiant. … An intimate account of one family’s planting of roots in American soil and the sacrifices great and small that each member makes along the way.” — Washington Post
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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In her debut novel, Thao Thai pulls us into the tumultuous lives of three generations of Vietnamese women. When Ann Tran receives the news of her grandmother Minh’s passing, she leaves her orderly life in small-town Michigan and moves back to the Florida wetlands to help her distant mother, Hương, clean out her childhood home, Banyan House. While grieving her beloved Ba Noi, Ann navigates her own secret pregnancy—and finally reckons with her mother, her past, and all the secrets of the family’s broken-down house. We love the way Thai explores the similarities and contrasts between her three characters, delving into their experiences from war-torn Vietnam to the steamy Everglades. Banyan Moon is a compelling read about resilience and family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thai debuts with an accomplished story of a Vietnamese American family's complex relationships and pressing mysteries. Ann Tran, a professional illustrator living in Michigan with her wealthy boyfriend, Noah Winthorpe, has been called home by her mother, Hương, to the family's Banyan House on Florida's Gulf Coast, where her grandmother Minh has died. Ann's life is in disarray; she's pregnant and unsure about her relationship with Noah, who has been cheating on her. Minh had known what it was like to be a single mother facing uncertainty. She left her native Vietnam in 1973 to honor her late husband's dying wish that she protect their children. Hương, meanwhile, who always longed for an intact family, guards Ann from the truth of why Ann grew up without her own father. Now, as inheritors of the Banyan House, the two women have a chance to repair their relationship, and they decide to live there together until Ann's baby is born. Still, Hương worries Ann will find evidence in the house of what happened to her father. In an emotional conclusion, Thai satisfyingly settles the question of whether total honesty is necessary to sustain loving connections between mothers and daughters. There's no shortage of multigenerational family narratives out there, and this one really stands out from the pack.
