Get your first book for just $5.

Join today!

We’ll make this quick.

First, enter your email. Then choose your move.

By pressing "Pick a book now" or "Pick a book later", you agree to Book of the Month’s Terms of use and Privacy policy.

Get your first book for just $5.

Join today!
undefined

You did it!

Your account is now up to date.

get the appget the app

Our app is where it’s at.

Unlock our Reading Challenge, earn prizes, and get notified of new books on our app.

Our app is where it’s at.

Unlock our Reading Challenge, earn prizes, and get notified of new books on our app.

get the ios appget the android app

Already have the app? Explore here.

get the ios appget the android app
Banyan Moon by Thao Thai

Literary fiction

Banyan Moon

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Thao Thai, on your first book!

Early Release

This is an early release that's only available to our members—the rest of the world has to wait to read it.

by Thao Thai

Excellent choice

Just enter your email to add this book to your box.

By pressing "Add to box", you agree to Book of the Month’s Terms of use and Privacy policy.

Quick take

A dilapidated Florida mansion is more than a home in this multigenerational story of Vietnamese mothers and daughters.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Multiple_Viewpoints

    Multiple viewpoints

  • Illustrated icon, Mama_Drama

    Mama drama

  • Illustrated icon, Immigration

    Immigration

  • Illustrated icon, Infidelity

    Infidelity

Synopsis

When Ann Tran gets the call that her fiercely beloved grandmother, Minh, has passed away, her life is already at a crossroads. In the years since she’s last seen Minh, Ann has built a seemingly perfect life—a beautiful lake house, a charming professor boyfriend, and invites to elegant parties that bubble over with champagne and good taste—but it all crumbles with one positive pregnancy test. With both her relationship and carefully planned future now in question, Ann returns home to Florida to face her estranged mother, Hương.

Back in Florida, Hương is simultaneously mourning her mother and resenting her for having the relationship with Ann that she never did. Then Ann and Hương learn that Minh has left them both the Banyan House, the crumbling old manor that was Ann’s childhood home, in all its strange, Gothic glory. Under the same roof for the first time in years, mother and daughter must face the simmering questions of their past and their uncertain futures, while trying to rebuild their relationship without the one person who’s always held them together.

Running parallel to this is Minh’s story, as she goes from a lovestruck teenager living in the shadow of the Vietnam War to a determined young mother immigrating to America in search of a better life for her children. And when Ann makes a shocking discovery in the Banyan House’s attic, long-buried secrets come to light as it becomes clear how decisions Minh made in her youth affected the rest of her life—and beyond.

Spanning decades and continents, from 1960s Vietnam to the wild swamplands of the Florida coast, Banyan Moon is a stunning and deeply moving story of mothers and daughters, the things we inherit, and the lives we choose to make out of that inheritance.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Banyan Moon.

Banyan Moon

Chapter 1

1998

At first, there was no sign of the red tide, except for a tightness in their throats as they picked their way through dune grass that bristled against their legs. Three shades of brown, three sets of stalks, wild as the vegetation prowling along the coast. Ann, seven years old and dying to run down to the surf, reached down to scratch her ankle, but her mother, Hương, pulled her up, in a silent hurry, though there was no appointment to make, no work to rush to that day. A rare day of repose for the Tran women, and one that each measured with her own internal expectation, none of which overlapped. The morning was still, if portentous.

“You’re so slow, con,” Hương said. “Little lost turtle.”

It was hard to tell if she was teasing. Hương’s voice shouldered an edge, something related to sarcasm, though Ann will never be able to pinpoint exactly what, even years later when she is an adult.

Ann peered up at her mother until she saw the shadow of a smile. Really just a pull of Hương’s lips, drawn out like a concession. Ann let herself relax when her mother took her hand, smoothing her thumb over Ann’s knuckles.

As the three of them tracked through the shell-pebbled gray sand, their noses began to twitch, an unfamiliar push of sinuses against their skulls. The red tide hit them then. They coughed, then hid their coughs from each other, trying to smile against the thrash of a March wind, a product of the unseasonable cold front this time of year.

Ann’s grandmother Minh, Hương’s mother, led the way. Her gait was purposeful, but pinched. There was something dry and dangerous about her, like flint meeting flint. She wore wide-legged trousers in eggplant and a button-down shirt that covered her arms entirely, except for a sliver of wrist, shaded exactly like sun-warmed hay. All that morning, she couldn’t shake a faint prickle of dissatisfaction, though she could not name its source. It was her way to listen for signs.

Create a free account!

Sign up to see book details, our quick takes, and more.

By pressing "Sign up", you agree to Book of the Month’s Terms of use and Privacy policy.

Why I love it

What does inheritance mean to you? The older I get the more this word haunts me. At the end of the day, what are we really left with? My parents, who didn’t have much, passed on their stories, which I have struggled to spin into gold, to help me make sense of my own identity and belonging on this pale blue dot.

Banyan Moon valiantly engages with the chameleonic nature of inheritance and the wounds and bonds forged across generations. Thao Thai’s seasoned debut is a beautiful, sweeping, multigenerational tale about three stubborn Vietnamese and Vietnamese American women. It is a tale as old as time—but perhaps new to you—about a daughter’s (Ann) inability to communicate with her estranged Vietnamese mother (Hương). That is, until one day, Ann’s matriarchal grandmother (Minh) passes away, and mother and daughter are forced to confront the past in order to untangle the inheritance Minh has left behind.

I thank Thao Thai for writing this book. Her words have stayed with me long after I finished it. Banyan Moon gives me hope that I can redefine “inheritance” one day, if not for myself, then for the next generation. It may very well do the same for you.

Member ratings (5,755)

Literary fiction
Intermezzo
The Book of George
Real Americans
Wellness
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
The God of the Woods
Same As It Ever Was
Annie Bot
Bear
Mercury
True Biz
Family Happiness
The Husbands
The Lady Waiting
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Good Material
The Bullet Swallower
Happy All the Time
Alice Sadie Celine
Let Us Descend
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Shark Heart
Transcendent Kingdom
Hello Beautiful
Dominicana
What's Mine and Yours
The Unsettled
Ask Again, Yes
Vladimir
Infinite Country
The Prophets
Normal People
The Verifiers
Salvage the Bones
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
I Have Some Questions for You
Black Buck
The History of Love
Age of Vice
Paper Names
The Light Pirate
The Secret History
The Kite Runner
Memorial
The Half Moon
Happiness Falls
The Gifted School
The Death of Vivek Oji
The Knockout Queen
Little Monsters
Yerba Buena
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Free Food for Millionaires
A Burning
The Mothers
The Water Dancer
Small Country
The Sympathizer
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Lot
An American Marriage
The Animators
The Mars Room
Exit West
White Fur
Woman No. 17
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Eat Only When You're Hungry
Rainbirds
A Ladder to the Sky
Golden Child
The Goldfinch
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
& Sons
The Association of Small Bombs
Lolly Willowes
All Grown Up
Marlena
Signal Fires
Someday, Maybe
Woman of Light
Marrying the Ketchups
The Shards
Literary fiction
View all
Intermezzo
The Book of George
Real Americans
Wellness
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
The God of the Woods
Same As It Ever Was
Annie Bot
Bear
Mercury
True Biz
Family Happiness
The Husbands
The Lady Waiting
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Good Material
The Bullet Swallower
Happy All the Time
Alice Sadie Celine
Let Us Descend
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Shark Heart
Transcendent Kingdom
Hello Beautiful
Dominicana
What's Mine and Yours
The Unsettled
Ask Again, Yes
Vladimir
Infinite Country
The Prophets
Normal People
The Verifiers
Salvage the Bones
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
I Have Some Questions for You
Black Buck
The History of Love
Age of Vice
Paper Names
The Light Pirate
The Secret History
The Kite Runner
Memorial
The Half Moon
Happiness Falls
The Gifted School
The Death of Vivek Oji
The Knockout Queen
Little Monsters
Yerba Buena
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Free Food for Millionaires
A Burning
The Mothers
The Water Dancer
Small Country
The Sympathizer
Fleishman Is in Trouble
Lot
An American Marriage
The Animators
The Mars Room
Exit West
White Fur
Woman No. 17
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Eat Only When You're Hungry
Rainbirds
A Ladder to the Sky
Golden Child
The Goldfinch
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
& Sons
The Association of Small Bombs
Lolly Willowes
All Grown Up
Marlena
Signal Fires
Someday, Maybe
Woman of Light
Marrying the Ketchups
The Shards