A wonderful and real story of mothers and daughters, learning to love, grieve, and forgive. 

Thao Thai writes beautiful sentences and crafts an authentic look at the impact of secrets and the motivations of women. She captures women doing their best even when the results are painful. She shows how our plans and choices often don’t play out how we imagine. Ann, Minh, and Hu’o’ng each get a voice taking us to key moments in Vietnam during the war and to the Banyan House in Florida.

I liked learning more about this time period and the women’s experiences and culture, without losing the story momentum. I loved how Thai articulates the complicated truths of being a mother and being a daughter. And I loved the ending. This was almost a perfect book for me for its depth and authenticity and I highly recommend it. 

“When I try to follow the string of one emotion to its genesis, I find another one tied right next to it, inseparable, and unable to be parsed. I’m tangled.”

“…vowed to cherish her all her days. Mothers and their promises. Unspoken covenants. Without them, we might let ourselves slip into darkness.”

“Or maybe it’s not something you inherit, but something that runs through you, another person’s trauma, their violence. It sits below the skin until you name it. And you root it out like a cancer.”