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Summary
Summary
From an award-winning author, a novel about a Vietnamese American family's ties to The Little House on the Prairie
Jobless with a PhD, Lee Lien returns home to her Chicago suburb from grad school, only to find herself contending with issues she's evaded since college. But when her brother disappears, he leaves behind an
object from their mother's Vietnam past that stirs up a forgotten childhood dream: a gold-leaf brooch, abandoned by an American reporter in Saigon back in 1965, that might be an heirloom belonging to Laura Ingalls Wilder. As Lee explores the tenuous facts of this connection, she unearths more than expected--a trail of clues and enticements that lead her from the dusty stacks of library archives to hilarious prairie life reenactments and ultimately to San Francisco, where her findings will transform strangers' lives as well as her own.
A dazzling literary mystery about the true origins of a time-tested classic, Pioneer Girl is also the deeply moving tale of a second-generation Vietnamese daughter, the parents she struggles to honor, the missing brother she is expected to bring home--even as her discoveries yield dramatic insights that will free her to live her own life to its full potential.
Author Notes
Bich Minh Nguyen (who goes by the name Beth) teaches literature and creative writing in San Francisco, where she
lives with her husband and their two children. Among her honors are a PEN/Jerard Fund Award and an American Book
Award. Her work has appeared in publications including the Found Magazine anthology and The New York Times .
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
As a child, Lee Lien loved to imagine that her mother's gold brooch originally belonged to Laura Ingalls Wilder, and had been left behind in a Saigon cafe by Laura's daughter, Rose, many years ago. Now unable to find a job after graduating with a Ph.D. in literature, Lee, the American-born daughter of Vietnamese immigrant parents, returns home to Chicago to help out with the family restaurant. This smart novel by American Book Award-winner Nguyen (Short Girls) aptly conveys the anxieties connected to simultaneously trying to find one's own way and live up to family expectations. When her brother Sam mysteriously disappears, leaving behind a cryptic note attached to the brooch, Lee begins looking into whether there's any truth to her belief that the brooch's original owner was Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter. The question soon becomes an obsession, and she heads westward, eventually coming to San Francisco, searching for any small clue to the story behind the gold brooch. She must also deal with an irascible mother who believes that Lee's Ph.D. is "a fake degree for a fake doctor," and with returning to a life from which her degree was meant to free her. By acknowledging but not over-emphasizing how Lee's identity has been shaped by her immigrant parents, Nguyen creates an insightful depiction of American life. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Inc. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A Vietnamese-American scholar finds familiar ground when she stumbles across a lost fragment in the story of Laura Ingalls Wilder and daughter Rose Wilder Lane. The third-person perspective of the author's novel Short Girls (2010) lent that work some distance. This more intimate first-person narrative is by Lee Lien, who has a newly minted doctorate in 19th-century literature but few job prospects. The book contrasts Lee's life with that of journalist and Little House on the Prairie collaborator Rose Wilder Lane. Lee, who has moved back in with her difficult mother and works at her mother's coffee/noodle house, has a combative relationship with her mother, much as the talented journalist Rose had with her own. "You are alike," Lee's grandfather tells her, much to her dismay. The discovery of a mysterious gold pin, etched with a little house and possibly abandoned by Rose in Saigon in 1965, leads Lee toward the book's pivot point, a mystery about a potential descendent of Laura Ingalls Wilder. The subject of that investigation is the weakest part of the narrative, leaning toward rom-com meet-cutes and a dubious liaison. That said, it's clear that Nguyen has a perceptive understanding of the tension between mothers and daughters and the troubling insights to be gained from digging into the past. An unexpected pleasure, with a well-drawn and compelling narrator.]]]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
A narrow gold pin, engraved with a small house on a lake, is found at the table in Ong Hai's Saigon restaurant where Rose, an American war correspondent, takes tea each afternoon. Ten years later, when Ong flees Vietnam for America with his daughter, that brooch is one of the few items he takes and will become the catalyst for the action in Nguyen's novel of migration, family, and the search for rootedness. Like Little House on the Prairie's Ingalls family that so enthralls her, eight-year-old Lee Lien, brother Sam, and their widowed mother and grandfather wander from one Midwestern state to another, working long hours in the restaurant business. As transients, Lee and Sam make few friends and are embarrassed by their mother's immigrant ways, her cold detachment, and her refusal to talk about their father's untimely death. Each sibling seems locked in a continuum of inexplicable hostility with their exacting mother. It's not until Lee earns a PhD and returns home jobless that the gold pin resurfaces, taking her on a scholarly hunt for Laura and Rose Wilder and their heirs. VERDICT Nguyen (Short Girls; Stealing Buddha's Dinner) draws a parallel between Rose and Laura Wilder and Lee and her mother. Though it's a bit of a stretch, this imaginative device spices up an otherwise conventional novel about the constant tug between first-generation immigrants and their more assimilated progeny. [See Prepub Alert, 8/12/13.]-Sally Bissell, Fort Myers, FL (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
