Bich Minh Nguyen's Pioneer Girl is a powerful, intimate novel that honors the legacy of one of the country's most beloved children's writers while speaking to the alienation and conflicts that mark the generational and cultural divide of Asian American families. It is a touching story about mothers and daughters overcoming emotional and physical frontiers.
Lee Lien is a jobless Ph.D. graduate who moves back home to work at the family restaurant amidst tensions between older brother Sam and their mother. When an angry Sam storms off after a disagreement, he takes all but one piece of jewelry--a gold pin with a faded image of a house surrounded by tall grasses, supposedly left at the Lien family's Saigon shop in the 1960s by visiting journalist Rose Wilder Lane, the eldest daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House on the Prairie fame.
Curiosity about this artifact leads Lee on a cross-country trek to solve the literary mystery of Rose Wilder Lane and the Little House saga. The journey also forces Lee to confront the emotional and generational gaps that threaten to unravel delicate family ties. Through Rose we find Lee, and through Lee we discover the courage required to forge one's own identity outside the sphere of parental influence--and the joys and disappointments of pursuing the American dream so coveted by the Wilders and idolized by immigrants. Pioneer Girl speaks to the heart and will inspire lovers of the Little House books to revisit Laura's adventures on the Missouri and Iowan homesteads. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant