This was fascinating. How a broach left at a restaurant led to a study of Laura Ingalls Wilder not only gave me new information about a series I loved as a child but it gave me a glimpse into another culture.

ee Lien is the daughter of Vietnamese parents, who fled Saigon in 1975. Her father sadly passed away years ago, and now her mother and grandfather run a little restaurant called The Lotus Leaf in Chicago. Lee has just got her PhD, and returns back home as she hasn't got a job yet.Her brother Sam as left in a weird way, as usual, and took a lot of money and valuable things from home with him. One thing he did left back home was a a gold-leaf brooch, abandoned by an American reporter in Saigon back in 1965, in the cafe of her grandfather, that might be an heirloom belonging to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Lee always had an obsession for Little House on the Prairie and begins researching if the brooche belonged to Laura or Rose Wilder. During her research and exploring, she unravels a lot more things than she expected firsthand. With the help from library archives and a trip to San Francisco, she finds out that her search has impact on a lot of people, most of all on her own family.


Fans of fiction with an Asian background will fall in love by this impressive story by Bich Minh Nguyen. She created a very entertaining storyline which moves from the family dynamics of an Vietnamese family, family honor and struggles, a missing brother, to the historical story of Little House on the Prairie. These two issues don't walk into each other's feet though in the story.

The most moving part of the book is certainly the family structure. Unfortunately, home doesn't feel like a home for Lee. Her mother is a first generation Vietnamese American and still lives by many of the traditions and rules of her mother country. She puts her son up on a pedestal, while Lee feels she is treated like a second class child because she is the second child, and even worse, a girl. Her brother, Sam, is given cars, money, and one day will be given whatever business their mother happens to own at the time. Lee's grandfather, Ong Hai, also plays quite a large role in the book. He owned a cafe, Cafe 88, in Saigon in 1965. One day, a American women steps in the cafe. Her name was Rose, and she was a reporter sent to write about the war from a women's perspective. Ong Hai is delighted when the women continues to return to hear more of his stories. On her last visit, Rose leaves a gold pin behind. Ong Hai saves the pin, but Rose never returns for it. The pin is one of the few things Ong Hai and Lee's mother bring with them to America. Ong Hai is the only one of the family that is always supportive to Lee.


Conclusion: Pioneer Girl (a reference to the biography written by Laura Ingalls Wilder) is a very moving and beautiful written story, a nice mix of the Vietnames immigrant experience and family dynamics, with The Little House on the Prairie as a second red line through it. Recommended!