Just Jennifer

Pioneer Girl by Bich Minh Nguyen (Viking, February 2014)

Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House on the Prairie fall into two camps: purists whose only accepted deviation from the beloved series of books is the television series.  Don’t even mention to them the idea that Laura’s daughter rose not only edited the fictionalized account of her mother’s life, but reshaped it, in effect rewriting her family history.  The other end of the spectrum (where I fall) are the readers who cannot get enough of the rugged pioneer life; bring on the legends, the myths and what-ifs: the more that is available to feed our obsession and imagination, the better.  Bich Minh (Beth) Nguyen has done just that in her novel Pioneer Girl.  Lee Lein has finished her PhD but cannot seem to get her academic career off the ground and so returns to her family and their restaurant in the suburbs of Chicago.  Lee finds the adage “you can never go home again” applies to her family as she and her strong-willed mother face the same arguments never resolved when Lee left for college; she sees herself as an adult returned home temporarily whereas her mother feels as the daughter it is Lee’s duty to return to help the family.  Lee’s brother also picks this time to briefly return home, leaving in his wake more turmoil and uncertainty for Lee, but also leaving a gold brooch Lee had almost forgotten.  Lee’s grandfather ran a café in Saigon in the 1960’s;  in 1965, an American reporter named Rose frequented the café and left a gold brooch that in Lee’s mind bears a striking resemblance to the pin Almanzo Wilder gave Laura the Christmas they were engaged in These Happy Golden Years.  An academic and researcher to the core, Lee travels to Iowa where Rose Wilder Lane’s papers are stored looking for proof that she is right; what she finds is a puzzling poem and a letter that set her zigzagging across the prairie and to San Francisco, following a trail that if she can verify what she hopes to will not only change her life and that of a stranger’s, but could possibly alter the history of America’s most famous pioneer families.

With a light hand, Nguyen weaves the history of Lee’s family into the story of Lee’s quest.  As the first generation American born daughter of a proud, traditional Vietnamese woman, Lee must struggle with the cultural values of her youth and her desire to make the most she-and her family- can of the American dream.  Lee’s family story traces a similar path as the Ingalls and Wilders did, moving from location to location, searching for work and a better life, though this is all done very subtly.  Lee’s search for the story of the brooch takes her not only into the past, but into the future, her future, as she learns to live for herself while still being part of the family she holds dear.