Banyan Moon
Selected as the July Read with Jenna book, the Barnes & Noble July Discover pick, an Indie Next pick, Indies Introduce Title, and a Book of the Month pick. Longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.
A sweeping, evocative debut novel following three generations of Vietnamese American women reeling from the death of their matriarch. This epic reveals one family’s inherited burdens, buried secrets, and unlikely love stories.
More about Banyan Moon“Thao Thai captures the complexities of familial love with an unflinching yet gorgeously lyric eye. Banyan Moon is an ambitious and masterful debut!" —Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas
“Heart-shatteringly beautiful. Banyan Moon is a love letter to keepers of secrets, to motherhood, family, and survival. Thao Thai is a major talent whose exciting, impressive, and poetic prose will grow into you, like a strong and lush banyan tree deeply rooted in the rich Vietnamese literary heritage.”—Nguyễn Quế Mai, internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child
“Banyan Moon is an intricately woven story of three generations of women, surviving and living each in their own way. This novel has everything you want: desire, betrayal, grit, tenderness, pride, love, and—most deliciously, most brazenly—the dirty secrets and sacred secrets we make and keep to protect what we hold dear.”—Meng Jin, author of Little Gods and Self-Portrait with Ghost
“A beautifully written, page-turning novel that explores the traumatic legacy of war and the intimacy of family conflict with fierce grace and psychological acuity. Banyan Moon is a celebration of life in all its forms and a joy to read.”—Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Exiles
“Tender, gripping, and heartbreaking. A haunting page-turner that reexamines lineage, motherhood, and what it means to be a survivor—in every definition of the word. A welcome debut from a stunning voice who will forever impact the Vietnamese American canon.” —Carolyn Huynh, author of The Fortunes of Jaded Women
"Banyan Moon offers an honest and aching exploration of the gulf between generations—how we misunderstand those we love the most, the unintentional hurt we cause them, how we struggle to find the language to connect. But it’s also a novel of hope, a story of forgiveness, a reminder that even though we can never fully know the people closest to us, it is worth the try."—Tracey Lien, international bestselling author of All That’s Left Unsaid
"Thao Thai pierces the veil between the living and the dead in this haunted and beautifully rendered debut. This is a story about mothers and daughters, the chasm where misunderstandings accrue, and enduring tenderness despite the little hurts we may inflict on our loved ones. Most affectingly, Thai gives us characters who mourn lost origins, but who still get to decide what home looks like. A spellbinding and intricately layered story, Banyan Moon celebrates Vietnamese women."—E.M. Tran, author of Daughters of the New Year
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.
Featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, Elle, Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Ms. Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Good Housekeeping, Goodreads, and more
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