A Recommended Book From:USA Today The Chicago Tribune Book Riot Refinery 29 InStyle The
Minneapolis Star-Tribune Publishers Weekly Baltimore Outloud Omnivoracious Lambda Literary
Goodreads Lit Hub The MillionsFINALIST FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZEWINNER OF THE NEW
AMERICAN VOICES AWARDFrom award-winning author Lysley Tenorio comes a big hearted debut novel
following an undocumented Filipino son as he navigates his relationship with his mother an
uncertain future and the place he calls homeExcel spends his days trying to seem like an
unremarkable American teenager. When he's not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed
pizza shop) or passing the time with his girlfriend Sab (occasionally in one of their town's
seventeen cemeteries) he carefully avoids the spotlight.But Excel knows that his family is far
from normal. His mother Maxima was once a Filipina B-movie action star who now makes her
living scamming men online. The old man they live with is not his grandfather but Maxima's
lifelong martial arts trainer. And years ago on Excel's tenth birthday Maxima revealed a
secret that he must keep forever. We are 'TNT'-tago ng tago she told him hiding and hiding.
Excel is undocumented-and one accidental slip could uproot his entire life.Casting aside the
paranoia and secrecy of his childhood Excel takes a leap joining Sab on a journey south to a
ramshackle desert town called Hello City. Populated by drifters old hippies and washed-up
techies-and existing outside the normal constructs of American society-Hello City offers Excel
a chance to forge his own path for the first time. But after so many years of trying to be
invisible who does he want to become? And is it possible to put down roots in a country that
has always considered you an outsider?Thrumming with energy and at once critical and hopeful
The Son of Good Fortune is a luminous story of a mother and son testing the strength of their
bond to their country-and to each other.
