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A review by jajorgen
Pioneer Girl by Bich Minh Nguyen
4.0
When it comes down to it not a whole lot happened in Pioneer Girl and yet I couldn't wait to get back to it whenever I had to take a break from reading.
Lee Lien returns to her family home in a Chicago suburb when she can't get a job after finishing her PhD. If it's not bad enough she has to take that step back, her mom puts her to work in their family restaurant The Lotus Leaf. Lee is miserably unhappy but can't figure out what to do to jumpstart her career and make her escape. A chance realization of a family connection to the family of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose sends Lee on a research quest.
What follows is a fascinating exploration about how the lives of a young girl growing up in 19th century America can mirror that of Lee who is the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants and has led a similarly peripatetic life.
If I have a quibble it's that the ending sort of just petered out. I kept thinking there must be something more, and there wasn't. But that was a minor point.
*posted to edelweiss as well
Lee Lien returns to her family home in a Chicago suburb when she can't get a job after finishing her PhD. If it's not bad enough she has to take that step back, her mom puts her to work in their family restaurant The Lotus Leaf. Lee is miserably unhappy but can't figure out what to do to jumpstart her career and make her escape. A chance realization of a family connection to the family of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose sends Lee on a research quest.
What follows is a fascinating exploration about how the lives of a young girl growing up in 19th century America can mirror that of Lee who is the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants and has led a similarly peripatetic life.
If I have a quibble it's that the ending sort of just petered out. I kept thinking there must be something more, and there wasn't. But that was a minor point.
*posted to edelweiss as well