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.
