The Family Recipe
A Novel
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In this “gem of a book that sparkles with longing and hope and healing” (J.C. Cervantes, New York Times bestselling author), estranged siblings find themselves competing to inherit their father’s Vietnamese sandwich franchise and unravel family mysteries.
Duc Tran, the eccentric founder of the Vietnamese sandwich chain Duc’s Sandwiches, has decided to retire. With the help of the shady family lawyer, Duc informs his five estranged adult children that to receive their inheritance, his four daughters must revitalize run-down shops in old-school Little Saigon locations across America: Houston, San Jose, New Orleans, and Philadelphia—within a year. But if the first-born (and only) son, Jude, gets married first, everything will go to him.
Each daughter is stuck in a new city, battling gentrification, declining ethnic enclaves, and messy love lives, while struggling to modernize their father’s American dream. Jude wonders if he wants to marry for love or for money—or neither. As Duc’s children scramble to win their inheritance, they begin to learn the real intention behind the inheritance scheme—and the secret their long-lost mother kept tucked away in the old fishing tackle box, all along.
Destined “to become an instant favorite” (Liza Palmer, author of Family Reservations), The Family Recipe is about rediscovering one’s roots, different types of fatherly love, legacy, and finding a place in a divided country where the only commonality among your neighbors is the universal love of sandwiches.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Huynh's zesty sophomore effort (after The Fortunes of Jaded Women), the five Trân siblings compete for their inheritance. Duc, founder of the national Duc's Sandwiches chain, assigns each of his four daughters one of the company's floundering outlets, on the provision that if they manage to turn their store around within one year, they'll get a cut of his estate. However, he also says that if their older brother, Jude, gets married before that time, he'll get everything. In Houston, Jude starts falling for his fiancée, Phoebe, after making a deal with her to marry for Duc's money. Meanwhile, the youngest sister, Georgia, encounters their estranged mother Evelyn—who walked out on the family 20 years earlier—in New Orleans, where she runs a Duc's restaurant. The reasons behind her departure gradually come to light after Bingo, one of the middle sisters, who's stationed in Philadelphia, uncovers a previously unknown link between Evelyn and family friend Huey Ngô, who helped Duc upon the latter's arrival in Texas when the KKK was terrorizing immigrants. Adding to the present-day drama, Jude finds out Phoebe is seeing someone else. Some of the final revelations are a bit far-fetched, but Huynh keeps up the momentum with lively dialogue. Readers are in for a treat.
