Combining the powerful scope of Homegoing with the mystical touch of The Immortalists, Daughters of the New Year is a captivating debut novel about five generations of Vietnamese mothers and daughters, drawing on Vietnamese zodiac astrology to chart the fateful events of their lives What does the future hold for those born in the years of the Dragon, Tiger, and Goat? In present day New Orleans, Xuan Trung, former beauty queen–turned-refugee after the Fall of Saigon, is obsessed with divining her daughters' fates through their Vietnamese zodiac signs. But Trac, Nhi, and Trieu diverge completely from their immigrant parents' expectations. Successful lawyer Trac hides her sexuality from her family; Nhi competes as the only woman of color on a Bachelor-esque reality TV show; and Trieu, a budding writer, is determined to learn more about her familial and cultural past. As the three sisters each begin to encounter strange glimpses of long-buried secrets from their ancestors, the story of the Trung women unfurls to reveal the dramatic events that brought them to America. Moving backwards in time, E.M. Tran takes us into the high school classrooms of New Orleans to Saigon beauty pageants to twentieth century rubber plantations, traversing a century as the Trungs are both estranged and united by the ghosts of their tumultuous history. A “haunted story of resilience and survival” (Meng Jin, Little Gods), Daughters of the New Year is an addictive, high-wire act of storytelling and mythmaking, illuminating an entire lineage of extraordinary women fighting to reclaim the power they’ve been stripped of for centuries.
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“E.M. Tran writes with such a unique sense of imagination and insightful observations that have the power to bring generations together and to illuminate the complex Vietnamese history and culture. Fresh, innovative, poetic and captivating, Daughters of the New Year is a book that deserves its place on everyone’s bookshelf.”
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Nguy?n Phan Qu? Mai, bestselling author