Pioneer Girl

From an award-winning author, a novel about a Vietnamese American family's ties to The Little House on the Prairie

Jobless with a PhD, Lee Lien returns home to her Chicago suburb from grad school, only to find herself contending with issues she's evaded since college. But when her brother disappears, he leaves behind an object from their mother's Vietnam past that stirs up a forgotten childhood dream: a gold-leaf brooch, abandoned by an American reporter in Saigon back in 1965, that might be an heirloom belonging to Laura Ingalls Wilder. As Lee explores the tenuous facts of this connection, she unearths more than expected — a trail of clues and enticements that lead her from the dusty stacks of library archives to hilarious prairie life reenactments and ultimately to San Francisco, where her findings will transform strangers lives as well as her own.

A dazzling literary mystery about the true origins of a time-tested classic, Pioneer Girl is also the deeply moving tale of a second-generation Vietnamese daughter, the parents she struggles to honor, the missing brother she is expected to bring home — even as her discoveries yield dramatic insights that will free her to live her own life to its full potential.

“Elegant, sharp-eyed, and very funny, Pioneer Girl is ultimately about how one finds kinship — familial, cultural, literary — that transcends the usual lexicon about identity and belonging. Navigating Vietnamese ‘immigrant guilt' and a stalled academic career, Lee Lien finds escape in trying to solve a literary mystery which leads her deep into her own heart and history. A wonderful read!” Cristina García, author of King of Cuba and Dreaming in Cuban

“I love how the Little House legend takes a wild detour into contemporary life in Pioneer Girl. Bich Minh Nguyen's wonderfully imagined literary history gets to the truth about mothers, daughters, frontiers, and the meaning of home. I couldn't put this down!” Wendy McClure, author of The Wilder Life

Bich Minh Nguyen (who goes by the name Beth) teaches literature and creative writing in San Francisco, where she

lives with her husband and their two children. Among her honors are a PEN/Jerard Fund Award and an American Book

Award. Her work has appeared in publications including the Found Magazine anthology and The New York Times.