Things We Lost to the Water

Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, Tuan and Binh. She has no job and no home, and her husband, Cong, is still in Vietnam. She mails him letters and tapes, hoping the family will be reunited and the boys will have a father at home.

As time passes, Huong understands that Cong will never join them. She has to absorb that loss while raising her sons in a new country. Tuan and Binh grow up under the weight of a father they barely knew, and of a country that lives on only in memory and imagination.

Each of the three settles into American life in a different way. Huong takes up with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new to the city. Tuan joins a local Vietnamese gang, hoping to reach his heritage through it. Binh, who now goes by Ben, embraces his emerging sexuality.

The novel follows a family of Vietnamese immigrants over the years, moving between the mother and her two sons. Their separate searches for identity pull them apart, until a disaster forces them to find another way back to one another.