Banyan Moon: A Novel
Written by Thao Thai
Narrated by Cindy Kay, Catherine Ho and Elyse Dinh
4/5
()
About this audiobook
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.
Editor's Note
Moving family saga…
After the death of her beloved grandmother, Minh, Ann Tran reconnects with her estranged mother, Huơng, at their family home, a gothic-style manor on the Gulf Coast. Banyan House, like the Tran family, has many secrets that could either permanently sever Ann and Huơng’s relationship or help rebuild it. Told from three perspectives, Thai’s first literary foray is a family saga about Vietnamese American women whose choices echo through generations.
Thao Thai
Thao is the author of Banyan Moon, the July 2023 Read with Jenna title, Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, and Book of the Month selection. Banyan Moon was also selected by booksellers as an IndieNext pick and longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. A recipient of the 2024 Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Excellence Award, her work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, WIRED, Elle, Lit Hub, and other publications. She lives in central Ohio with her husband and daughter.
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Reviews for Banyan Moon
64 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Well written story. I really enjoyed this.I loved Minh the most.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The novel explores the lives of 3 generations of Vietnamese-American women, each discovering, within themselves, the strength of motherhood. The story didn't fully resonate with me though, as it was unevenly paced and some aspects weren't believable while there was one particular plot like which felt unfinished to me.