While story line was a good idea the adaption was not. Very choppy and superficial ( )

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.

Huong gradually comes to the realization that she would never see her spouse again. Her kids, Tuan and Binh, grow up in the absence of their absent father, plagued by a man and a nation locked in their memories and imaginations, as she struggles to come to terms with this loss. As they proceed, the three adjust to life in America in various ways: Tuan joins a neighborhood Vietnamese gang in an effort to feel more connected to his heritage; Huong falls in love with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new to the area; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted country and his developing gay sexuality. Before a disaster strikes the city they now call home and threatens to split them apart, their search for identification as individuals and as a family until a calamity strikes the city they now call home and forces them to immediately find a new way to join together and cherish the connections that bind, which threatens to rip them apart.

With this magnificent novel I have once again found one of my certain to be top ten reads of the new year. This book swept me away with the fascinating story of an immigrant mother and her two boys. Ben, in particular, impressed me as the center of the story - he changes, learning to swim (at about the center of the narrative), learning to accept his gay persona, and deciding to go to Paris and become a writer.

Demonstrating a marvelous prose style and an ability to link together the characters' lives with details that held my interest, this first novel was wonderful and moving all the way to the last page. I immediately wanted to read it again and that is always the sign of a great read. ( )

I have read many immigrant stories this year, in which people emigrate from many places! However, it's sad that the destination is almost always America. Not to place that blame on this book specifically, after I have read so many. Anyway, this is a family from Vietnam who moves to New Orleans. Huong is a pregnant woman with a small child, and she expects her husband to join her, but as the boat drifts away, she sees him standing on the shore. The book follows a young mother raising two sons in one of America's uniquest places. The perspective shifts from the mother to each son. But there are so many great immigrant books (A GREAT thing), it's hard to see what makes this one stand out, especially when the jump to the ending seemed a bit of a stretch to end the book with a quick dose of maximum conflict. But the book is still worth reading. ( )

Riveting

This was the most beautifully written book I have read in a long time. This family's developmental arc in the face of so much disruption, so much pain. . . . ( )

This is a well-written novel, evocative of places and times. ( )