Thao Thai's tense, luminous second novel, The Seekers of Deer Creek, explores art, love, loss, and family through the complicated story of two Vietnamese American sisters and their connection to an enigmatic French Vietnamese artist.
Growing up in rural Deer Creek, Wis., Vivi and Calla Nguyễn shared a fierce bond. They were wildly different in temperament but devoted to one another and their art. After their mother left, Vivi became the caretaker for Calla and their father, Tuấn, a mercurial man who rarely spoke of the family he left back in Việt Nam.
As adults, the sisters pursue different life paths: Vivi as a meticulous, respected art conservator at a Chicago museum, Calla as a brilliant artist who moves through the world and her studio with passion and boldness. Months after Calla's latest art opening--site of a dramatic falling-out between the sisters--their father dies, and Calla discovers among his papers a mysterious letter and an unfinished sketch, which bears a striking similarity to a piece called Blue Mirror by the French Vietnamese artist K.P. Lý. She convinces Vivi that these prove their family has a link to Lý. Reluctantly, Vivi agrees to join Calla on a quest that takes them from their native Midwest to the French countryside to their ancestral home in Việt Nam, and--more importantly and more dangerously--into the fraught terrain of their relationship.
Thai (Banyan Moon) deftly captures the nuances of the sisters' connection. Tender and spiky, like the sisters' relationship, The Seekers of Deer Creek mixes art history, family secrets, and psychological insight to create a dynamic portrait of two unforgettable women. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams