Meghan Recommends Daughters of the New Year

 

 

Happy Lunar New Year! 2026 is the year of the Fire Horse. Do you know what animal sign  of the Chinese Zodiac you were born under? If you were Xuan’s daughter, you’d know. As Daughters of the New Year opens in 2016, Xuan is poring over her guide to the New Year and calling her daughters to tell them what to expect for the year and how to make the most of their fate, based on their zodiac signs.

 

Readers then meet her three daughters, each forging her own path, disdainful of their mother’s superstition (as they see it.) Then the book skips back, and we see snippets of the girls growing up; feeling never American enough, never Vietnamese enough. Then  Xuan, newly arrived in the United States and trying to adapt to her new life. Further back, to the escape from Vietnam, further back, to her life in Sai Gon, where she was rich and her own mother blamed Xuan’s poor choices on her signs. We continue to be led back through the generations, finally ending with legendary figures like Lady Trieu and the Trung sisters.

 

After the initial jumps back in time, I kept waiting to get back to current day, but as I settled in to the backwards journey, I began to see parallels between the sisters in 2016 and their ancestors. The author writes in her author’s note, “I imagined a family just like ours (and indeed, many Vietnamese immigrant families ARE just like ours), children purposefully and maddeningly separated from a cultural history too difficult to recall. What was interesting to me was not necessarily the damage wrought in the present, but rather a subversion, an unraveling of the past. What happens when we have the ability to go back, uncover a truth that is, in reality, forever, obscured? What would we discover? How often does history repeat itself without or knowing, the same pain and joy experienced again and again?”

 

While it sounds like a writing experiment, I found it oddly worked in the novel – no character is less interesting because we only to see get a piece of her life, and the fact that we don’t know exactly *what happened* makes sense – history never ends, a family doesn’t end, everyone just keeps living their individual lives, inextricably connected to everyone who came before or after.

 

Recommended for people who enjoy open-ended fiction.

Colleen recommends "The Warm Hands of Ghosts"

This adult historical fiction title effortlessly weaves an eerie undertone of magical realism amongst a somber tale of grief, loss, and finding strength to go on.  

The Warm Hands of Ghosts tells the stories of Laura Iven, a wounded and discharged field nurse, and her brother who she left behind, Freddie. Laura has survived the horrors of war as well as a recent tragedy at home. Before she can recover, she receives word that her brother has died in combat. But Laura is convinced that something is amiss and sets off to find out the truth.

Once her story is underway, we are introduced to Freddie from his point of view. Freddie Iven finds himself trapped on the battlefield with another wounded soldier. But is this soldier an ally or enemy? Can they make it out alive? If they do, where can they even go?

Against all odds, they manage to escape killing fields and find solace in an abandoned mansion. But all is not quite as it seems for them, either.  

Laura and Freddie fight to reunite with one another as they overcome physical obstacles, fight psychological battles, and traverse treacherous war-torn lands. But are they headed towards one another, or have their paths already passed in time and space?