Why a Booktrail?
1960s, 1970s, 1980s: Three generations of Vietnamese American women reeling from the death of their matriarch.
Banyan Moon
What you need to know before your trail
When Ann Tran gets the call that her beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. Ann has built a seemingly perfect life. She lives in a beautiful lake house and has a charming professor boyfriend, but it all crumbles away 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, Hu’o’ng. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past, 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. 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 her family.
Travel Guide
Vietnam and Florida
The locations in both countries and vague and secondary to the plot. To be fair, the locations represent culture and distance to show how the three generations of women have led such very different lives.
The Banyan House of the title is memorable:
“The Banyan House gretts me with its lofty, threatening patrician air. It’s a mixture of Spanish ahd Colonial styles, as if the architect couldn’t decide what to commit to.” the columns are stately, but the faded pink exterior is even shabbier than I remember and it was never well maintained to begin with.”
“And out back, looming beyond the house, in the old banyan tree, huge and spindly, with branches that grow downward sweeping the dirt like the hem of an antique gown.”
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Banyan Moon
Destination: Vietnam, Florida Author/guide: Thao Thai Departure Time: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s
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