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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
"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.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Tender, gripping and heartbreaking. A haunting page turner that reexamines lineage, motherhood, and what it means to be a survivor -- in every definition of the word. A welcome debut from a stunning voice who will forever impact the Vietnamese American canon." - Carolyn Huynh
"Banyan Moon is an intricately woven story of three generations of women, surviving and living each in their own way. This novel has everything you want: desire, betrayal, grit, tenderness, pride, love, and--most deliciously, most brazenly--the dirty secrets and sacred secrets we make and keep to protect what we hold dear." - Meng Jin
"A beautifully written, page-turning novel that explores the traumatic legacy of war, the complexity of cultural assimilation, and the intimacy of family conflict with fierce grace and psychological acuity. Banyan Moon is a celebration of life in all its forms and a joy to read." - Christina Baker Kline
"Banyan Moon offers an honest and aching exploration of the gulf between generations--how we misunderstand those we love the most, the unintentional hurt we cause them, how we struggle to find the language to connect. But it's also a novel of hope, a story of forgiveness, a reminder that even though we can never fully know the people closest to us, it is worth the try." - Tracey Lien
"Heart-shatteringly beautiful. Banyan Moon is a love letter to keepers of secrets, to motherhood, family and survival. Thao Thai is a major talent whose exciting, impressive, and poetic prose will grow into you, like a strong and lush banyan tree deeply rooted in the rich Vietnamese literary heritage." - Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
"Thao Thai captures the complexities of familial love with an unflinching, yet gorgeously lyric, eye. Banyan Moon is an ambitious and masterful debut!" - Stacey Swann
"Thao Thai pierces the veil between the living and the dead in this haunted and beautifully rendered debut. This is a story about mothers and daughters, the chasm where misunderstandings accrue, and enduring tenderness despite the little hurts we may inflict on our loved ones. Most affectingly, Thai gives us characters who mourn lost origins, but who still get to decide what home looks like. A spellbinding and intricately layered story, Banyan Moon celebrates Vietnamese women." - E M Tran
"Banyan Moon is an intricately woven story of three generations of women, surviving and living each in their own way. This novel has everything you want: desire, betrayal, grit, tenderness, pride, love, and--most deliciously, most brazenly--the dirty secrets and sacred secrets we make and keep to protect what we hold dear." - Meng Jin
"A beautifully written, page-turning novel that explores the traumatic legacy of war, the complexity of cultural assimilation, and the intimacy of family conflict with fierce grace and psychological acuity. Banyan Moon is a celebration of life in all its forms and a joy to read." - Christina Baker Kline
"Banyan Moon offers an honest and aching exploration of the gulf between generations--how we misunderstand those we love the most, the unintentional hurt we cause them, how we struggle to find the language to connect. But it's also a novel of hope, a story of forgiveness, a reminder that even though we can never fully know the people closest to us, it is worth the try." - Tracey Lien
"Heart-shatteringly beautiful. Banyan Moon is a love letter to keepers of secrets, to motherhood, family and survival. Thao Thai is a major talent whose exciting, impressive, and poetic prose will grow into you, like a strong and lush banyan tree deeply rooted in the rich Vietnamese literary heritage." - Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
"Thao Thai captures the complexities of familial love with an unflinching, yet gorgeously lyric, eye. Banyan Moon is an ambitious and masterful debut!" - Stacey Swann
"Thao Thai pierces the veil between the living and the dead in this haunted and beautifully rendered debut. This is a story about mothers and daughters, the chasm where misunderstandings accrue, and enduring tenderness despite the little hurts we may inflict on our loved ones. Most affectingly, Thai gives us characters who mourn lost origins, but who still get to decide what home looks like. A spellbinding and intricately layered story, Banyan Moon celebrates Vietnamese women." - E M Tran
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