Banyan Moon: A Novel Thao Thai

A sweeping, evocative debut novel following 3 generations of Vietnamese American women reeling from the death of their matriarch, revealing the family's inherited burdens, buried secrets, & 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, & invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne & good taste--but it all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship & carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Hung. 
Back in Florida, Hung is simultaneously mourning her mother & resenting her for having the relationship with Ann that she never did. Then Ann & Hung 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 1st time in years, mother & daughter must face the simmering questions of their past & 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--& beyond. Spanning decades & continents, from 1960s Vietnam to the wild swamplands of the Florida coast, Banyan Moon is a stunning & deeply moving story of mothers & daughters, the things we inherit, & the lives we choose to make out of that inherita