Central Ohio author talks debut, selected for 'Read with Jenna' book club on 'Today' show

Thao Thai, who lives north of Columbus, just published her first novel at the age of 37.

“Banyan Moon,” an immersive story of three generations of women, ranges from Vietnam during the “American war” to a decrepit, haunted mansion on the Gulf Coast of Florida, with stops along the way in the Midwest.

The novel, equal parts thrilling page-turner with a supernatural twist; lyrical literary fiction full of insights about the immigrant experience; and the complications of relationships between mothers and daughters; was chosen as the July selection for the "Today" show's “Read with Jenna” book club, led by Jenna Bush Hager.

Thai immigrated as a child from Vietnam to Florida. She received a Master's of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Ohio State University, where she worked with novelists Lee Martin and Erin McGraw, and poet Andrew Hudgins, but then put writing mostly to the side for years.

“I think it's really interesting publishing my first book as someone slightly older," Thai said. "I'm not going to make any '30 under 30 lists,' but I love it. I call this my second-chance career, because I was a design director and a computer programmer for about a decade, and I didn't write very much during that time, so this feels like a kind of homecoming, getting back to work, and my first love."

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“Banyan Moon” is set at the Banyan House, where entrepreneur and grandmother Minh lives until her death early in the novel.

That death doesn't end her presence in the story, much of which she narrates from an afterlife where she looks back on her life in Vietnam and, in the present, longs to help with the difficult challenges faced by her daughter Huong, whose marriage has ended unhappily, and her beloved granddaughter Ann, who has a fraught relationship with her mother.

Thai recently spoke to the Dispatch about the book.

Question: Tell me about how the novel came into being. You'd been writing non-fiction before this?

Thao Thai: I've done both. I started an M.F.A. program for fiction and switched to nonfiction halfway through. Most of my published work is essays. But during the pandemic, I was thinking a lot about home, and what it means to be trapped in certain places or certain relationships. I was really interested in exploring both the claustrophobia of these really close, tangled relationships and also the ways that decay can manifest in homes. I was thinking a lot about books like “Rebecca” and other Gothic fiction where the home is a central character and metaphor. So, the Banyan House and consequently 'Banyan Moon' came into being from a lot of these questions.

Q. The house is certainly a crucial part of the novel. What inspired it?

Thai: I grew up around big, inherited houses. I lived in Florida on the Gulf Coast, and a lot of the homes there are very beautiful and are passed down from generation to generation. I have never lived in a house like that, but I was interested in questions of inheritance, and how somebody of the diaspora, somebody who is an immigrant, inserts themselves and becomes part of this inherited tradition. Most immigrants who come to America don't get handed a beautiful, centuries-old house. And yet, home is a real question in the diaspora. So, it became a real merging of these concerns and tensions.

Q. Tell me how the novel evolved as you were writing it. What did you set out to write, and how did it change as you were writing?

Thai: I was writing initially from Minh, the grandmother's, point of view, how she related to the people she left behind without being able to directly interact with them, because she was dead for most of the novel. But as I began writing, the other women began to speak to me as well. They had desires of their own. And I really wanted to get into their interiority as well. So, it evolved from a pretty standard, though ghostly, story, to one that involved all the different perspectives, as well as the different timelines.

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Q. Did you find any of the characters trying to take over the novel, or was it easy for you to maintain a balance among them all?

Thai: My problem was that Huong, the mother figure, because she does tend to be a little more passive in some ways − I had a habit of not giving her the page space that she deserved. But her story is one of the more gripping narratives, because she had to deal with a love story that disintegrated. She was one of the survivors of heartbreak. I had to find a way to honor her story in the book.

Q. I like that she decides to learn to swim in the ocean, after never swimming before. There's something very primal about that.

Thai: It gives her an arc beyond her romantic one. Learning to swim, she gained some of her agency back.

Q. What is it about the relationship between mothers and daughters that makes for such great fiction?

Thai: I think there is both an element of universality and specificity. In encountering readers and editors and the people who worked on the book with me, I found that people were able to relate to the complexity of the mother-daughter relationship, because they themselves had had these complicated relationships with their own parents. And I think that so many of the narratives we are told about mothers and daughters feel very flat. They're either overly bucolic and idealized images of mothers and daughters, a kind of “Gilmore Girls” world or a sitcom world. Or we get this other dynamic, where it's crash and burn and then it's over. I wanted to make something where there were both moments of dissolution and moments of forgiveness. I think the specificity of this particular story will have readers asking questions about their own stories.

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Q. Do you think there's something about the South, about the Gulf Coast, that lends itself to this particular kind of Gothic story?

Thai: From a practical perspective, a lot of immigrants from Vietnam ended up in Florida because it was by the water, so that made logical sense. But in terms of greater questions of craft, I really grew up among the Southern Gothic tradition, and a lot of the questions presented by those novels, which were focused on questions of transgression and alienation and place. How do we find our way to belong in a place that is sometimes inhospitable to us? And in a way, these were the same questions that people of the diaspora asked: questions of belonging and identity and finding our roots in places that may not always welcome us.

Q. How did you find out yours was going to be the July 'Read with Jenna' book, and what's that experience been like so far?

Thai: It's been incredible. I daydreamed about this book being part of the “Read with Jenna” book club, and for a long time, it was really just a pipe dream. I've been following Jenna (Bush Hager)'s picks for years. She really comes from a reading family, her mother, her sister, they are all genuine readers. I knew that her picks came from a real love of literature. She has always been interested in family stories, stories about belonging and identity. When I got the phone call that this book was picked for the book club, I was over the moon not only because it's such a huge honor, but because I knew Jenna herself had handpicked it. It's been really exciting. I was on the 'Today' show plaza a couple weeks ago handing out books, and I get to meet her again at the end of the month.

Q. What are you working on now?

Thai: My next project is a literary thriller. It engages a lot of the same issues, tangled family relationships and secrets, but it takes a different twist, and there's a different setting.

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Central Ohio author Thao Thai debut chosen for 'Today' show book club