Booksology The book is told on a dual timeline, which comes with pre-content warnings. It’s not easy to read, so be careful.
The first timeline is San Jose, California in 1999, following 17-year-old Jane, who is about to graduate from high school, and has a big secret she maintains. She enters her dream college and moves at the end of the summer. This is a big secret for several reasons, including the fact that she is like the glue that brings together her family. Mom disappears and Jane intervenes to become the rock of her younger brother Paul. She feels that their demands are so mandatory for their fathers, sometimes physically abusive. She is scared to say she’s leaving as she worries that she will feel like she’s abandoning him and leaving him for herself. At the same time, Jane knows that this is an opportunity to live her life, rather than live the life she believes she is supposed to live. Furthermore, she escapes from her father’s strict expectations.
The second timeline is 1975, following Phuc, who is about to leave the war-torn Vietnamese country during the war. It was a brutal war, and even the family was divided into their loyalty. But for Phuc, leaving Vietnam is at least not easy. Every time he tried to go outside he was either abused or in danger of losing his life. Even the boat becomes a place of terror when he finally gets the chance to go outside. He witnesses the limits of murder, death, and human suffering. All of this is embedded in him every time he feels deeply and tries to escape. When he finally arrives in America, he gets married and moves to San Jose. But even if America had no war, he would carry him with the burden of survival and the challenges that arise from being an immigrant.
Phuc is Jane and Paul’s father, and this is not a spoiler. You know early on that you are looking at both sides of what was a traumatic immigrant experience suffering from violence, pain and suffering. This divided perspective gives Phuc an insight into how he behaves with his children. It also gives Jane a lot to think about why she feels like she feels like her white American classmates when she eschews her Vietnamese heritage. This changes the story and changes as Jane is able to be reunited with her family abroad and sees her best friend (and second generation immigrants) mistakenly in her attempt to forget her family’s past.
This is a slow, romanceless read, and a powerful story of family, immigration, trauma, mental health, intergenerational trauma, and the impact on making a life for yourself when the world was the farthest for you. Jane and Pook are both deeply flawed characters, but their flaws make their story so compelling.
