Pioneer Girl

By: Bich Minh Nguyen

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

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.

©2014 Bich Minh Nguyen (P)2014 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Critic reviews

"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 Garcia, 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

Mispronunciations and slow pace of narration dispelled any sense of verisimilitude

The clear mispronunciation of family names and basic Vietnamese terms took me out of the story, which is written as a first-person narration from the perspective of a Vietnamese-American main character. Ong Hai, a key character, is called ‘Ung Hai’ which is not consistent with pronunciation in any dialect of Vietnamese and grating to the ears of any native speaker of Vietnamese. It was a constant reminder that the story was not actually being told by the main character but an ‘outsider’ who doesn’t know the language. ‘Sua’ (milk) pronounced as ‘soo-ah’; ‘cha gio’ pronounced as ‘cha jee-oh’ when it is actually ‘cha yaw’ (Southern dialect) or ‘cha zaw’ (Northern dialect).

I also had to listen to the story at 1.25x speed because it was otherwise so so very slow. Wish this book was re-recorded actually using a Vietnamese-American voice actor, or at least a bilingual voice actor.

Interesting, not appropriate for children

I thought this would be a great book to read, since we all love Little House on the Prairie books, and and we have some Vietnamese family and friends. However, the language in the book, and the sex scenes spoiled the book for me. This would definitely not be appropriate for children or teens. And the ending of the book left me hanging--it just wasn't a satisfying read.

MUST LISTEN!!!

Definitely a great story that kept me listening it from the beginning to the end. The Little House series are now on my list to listen and read. I was heavily influenced by the author.