by Thanhha Lai
First published 2015
Mai had her summer mapped out: lazy days at California beaches, hanging with friends, doing absolutely nothing productive. Instead she finds herself on a plane to Vietnam with her grandmother, who has decided it's time to discover what happened to her missing husband during the war. Mai's parents see this as perfect timing. Their daughter needs to connect with her heritage, they insist. But Mai feels no connection to Vietnam. The heat overwhelms her. The smells assault her senses. She stumbles through conversations in a language she barely speaks. Her distant relatives remain strangers. The customs confuse her. This country belongs to her family's past, not her future. Yet as her grandmother pursues decades-old mysteries about her grandfather's fate, Mai realizes she cannot simply endure this journey. She must navigate between the California girl she knows herself to be and the Vietnamese granddaughter her family needs her to become.
Genres: family-life, coming-of-age, contemporary, asian-american
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: California, Vietnam
Period: present-day
272 pages · Hardcover · HarperCollins