Banyan Moon : A Read with Jenna Pick

A TODAY Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick

"A riveting mother-daughter tale." Elle

"Radiant. An intimate account of one familys 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 familys 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 shes last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect lifea beautiful lake house, a charming professor boyfriend, and invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne and good tastebut 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, Hung.

Back in Florida, Hungis simultaneously mourning her mother and resenting her for having the relationship with Ann that she never did. Then Ann and Hunglearn that Minh has left them both the Banyan House, the crumbling old manor that was Anns 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 whos always held them together.

Running parallel to this is Minhs 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 Houses attic, long-buried secrets come to light as it becomes clear how decisions Minh made in her youth affected the rest of her lifeand beyond.

Spanning decades and continents, from 1960s Vietnam to the wild swamplands of the Florida coast,Banyan Moonis 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.