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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.
"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." - Publishers Weekly
"An unexpected pleasure, with a well-drawn and compelling narrator." - Kirkus
"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." - Library Journal
This information about Pioneer Girl was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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.
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