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Things We Lost to the Water
In this beautifully written debut, which begins in 1970s Vietnam, a woman flees Saigon with her sons to to escape the encroaching Communist regime. She can't understand how her husband was left behind—he was ready to board the escape boat with his family, but she must make her way to New Orleans without him. Over the years, her countless letters go unanswered, but she longs for her sons to have a father again, and wonders how much their struggles would be eased were he present. The story unfolds over the course of thirty years: we see those boys grow up and wrestle with identity, family, and their pervasive sense of otherness. Those reading with a literary lens will enjoy noting the ways Nguyen plays with the water motif in this perceptive character study. Similar in tone to Ocean Vuong's <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/1047/9780525562023" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" >On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous</a>; if you enjoyed the one, you'll like the other.
About the Book
A stunning debut novel about an immigrant Vietnamese family who settles in New Orleans and struggles to remain connected to one another as their lives are inextricably reshaped.
When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father.
But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she copes with this loss, her sons, Tuan and Binh grow up in their absent father’s shadow, haunted by a man and a country trapped in their memory and imagination. As they push forward, the three adapt to life in America in different ways: Huong takes up with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new in town; Tuan tries to connect with his heritage by joining a local Vietnamese gang; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted homeland and his burgeoning sexuality. Their search for identity–as individuals and as a family–threatens to tear them apart. But then disaster strikes the city they now call home, and they must find a new way to come together and honor the ties that bind them.
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