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 to their art. After their mother left, Vivi, two years the elder, became the caretaker for Calla and their father, Tuấn, a mercurial man who rarely spoke of the family he left back in Việt Nam. The sisters took to the woods whenever their father's temper flared, and Vivi learned to be watchful and prudent, protecting Calla so her sister could flourish.
As adults, the two 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 a mysterious letter and an unfinished sketch among his papers. She convinces Vivi that the letter and the sketch, which bears a striking similarity to a piece called Blue Mirror by the French Vietnamese artist K.P. Lý, prove their family has a connection 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' complex relationship, contrasting Vivi's need to protect both Calla and herself from harsh realities with Calla's need to explore, to push boundaries, to provoke. The sisters' issues go beyond mere bickering; each of them must confront the childhood memories that have hardened into myth, and each must open up to a new way of relating to one another. As Vivi painstakingly translates a journal left behind by Lý, the sisters also begin to question other accepted narratives: what the art world says about Lý, and what their father told or didn't tell them about the family he left behind. Vivi, especially, is forced to reexamine her conviction that she is the sister with all the answers, as Calla tugs her (sometimes literally) into a world more perilous and more vibrant than her carefully ordered conservator's lab.
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
Shelf Talker: Thao Thai's luminous second novel follows two Vietnamese American sisters on a quest to unearth their family's connection to an enigmatic French Vietnamese artist.