Editorial Content for The Seekers of Deer Creek

Thao Thai, the bestselling author of BANYAN MOON, returns with THE SEEKERS OF DEER CREEK. This sweeping and powerful literary mystery is about two sisters on a quest for a long-forgotten artist --- and the surprising truths about family and forgiveness that they discover instead.

Born into a family fractured by immigration, loss and addiction, Vivi and Calla Nguyễn could not be more different from each other. Whereas level-headed Vivi is assured and self-restrained, artistic Calla is reckless, wide open to the world and all its possibilities. As children, they often escaped to the woods surrounding their home in Deer Creek, weaving fantasies of woodland creatures and sleeping princesses. But this all hid a darker truth: their mother, May, abandoned the family when they were young, leaving their father, Tuấn, to descend into alcoholism and abuse. 

Through it all, art became a safety net for the girls, a home they could invent and visit whenever their lives became too sad and stifling. For Vivi, this meant growing into a career of art conservation; for Calla, a career as a budding artist working in collage and mixed media. Though they occupy two hemispheres of the same world, when we meet them, they have not spoken since their father’s funeral.

"Far more than a globe-trotting mystery, THE SEEKERS OF DEER CREEK unfolds into a poignant, breathtaking exploration of generational trauma and the past’s unwillingness to ever truly allow itself to be buried."

So when Calla appears on the steps of the museum where Vivi works, brandishing a letter and a sketch left behind by their father, it seems to be another of Calla’s overdramatic, ostentatious shows of reckless abandon. After all, neither girl could ever claim a close relationship with Tuấn, and Vivi is focused on the museum’s approaching exhibition on Vietnamese French surrealist painter K. P. Lý. 

Heralded for his expansive use of blues of varying depths and puzzled over due to his shadowy history, Lý is perhaps best known for his painting Blue Mirror, his first and only work of portraiture, depicting two women with their faces streaked through with an ominous slash of red. Shortly after producing it, Lý disappeared forever. Now, for the first time in her career, Vivi has the opportunity not just to see the inscrutable work, but to study it in close range. So you can imagine her surprise when Calla reveals that their father had an exact copy of the painting in his shed, along with an unsigned letter claiming that “[w]hen my body is gone, the art is all that is left” and hinting at a mysterious treasure buried “where time peels from light.” 

Long accustomed to acting as her sister’s protector, Vivi knows that Calla will not let the mystery lie. The idea of her taking off on an adventure of this magnitude is not wise given her addictive tendencies and recent divorce. Prone to outlandish fantasies, Calla has already constructed an imagined history of the painting and its possible connection to their family. Adamant about severing her ties to her abusive childhood and parentage, Vivi is quick to dismiss her sibling. But, obsessing over the sketch one night, she takes a closer look at the painting itself and discovers pentimento, an act of overpainting that suggests an artist’s hesitance and is often used to prove the authenticity of a work. 

Putting her career --- and her relationship with her boyfriend --- at risk, Vivi begins to restore the painting and discovers something even more shocking than her father’s papers: painted-over portraits of two women, one white and one Vietnamese, bearing the same facial freckle that dots Vivi’s face. But why would Lý have painted over them, and who were they to him? Now, with her personal and professional lives clashing, Vivi knows that she must follow Calla on her investigation into their father’s connection to Blue Mirror. But doing so will mean delving into her own past and opening herself up for reflection. Unlike the art of conservation, it will take more than a careful hand and a fine-haired brush.

The sisters’ journey takes them first to their alma mater, where a curmudgeonly but brilliant former professor shares with them his trove of letters between Lý and his agent. Armed with clues from the letter left behind by their father, the girls are able to trace a connection to a chateau in France, where Lý once spent a summer following a bout of serious depression. Could this be where Lý painted Blue Mirror? And more importantly, could it lead to clues about his disappearance? With nothing but a hunch, three decades of hurt feelings, and the seeping grief of their father’s death, Vivi and Calla travel across the world, leaving behind their careers, partners and homes --- but not, as they will come to realize, their history. 

Far more than a globe-trotting mystery, THE SEEKERS OF DEER CREEK unfolds into a poignant, breathtaking exploration of generational trauma and the past’s unwillingness to ever truly allow itself to be buried. “Before their minds and imaginations were fully formed,” Thao Thai writes, “they’d learned together all the ways to hide from the world, and each other.” Never is this statement more true than when we meet Vivi and Calla as adults. And yet, so too is the fact that they are endlessly drawn to each other, that they alone have fought for decades to smooth out the edges of their shared history. 

In writing the sisters as opposites, Thai allows each woman to grapple with the mystery of Lý and his connection to their father separately, each invoking her own knowledge of art to come at the investigation from different sides. But their loyalty --- tangled up in their resentments and underlying insecurities --- suffers, often putting the investigation at risk. Just as effortlessly as Thai weaves the generations-old mystery of Lý’s final days, so too does she ask her protagonists to look unflinchingly at themselves and each other in order to come “home.” The result is a wonderfully balanced, endlessly fascinating journey into the past, bolstered by Thai’s utterly gorgeous writing. 

I think that Thai herself explains it best when writing one of Tuấn’s final missives: “Our family seems thrown upon a galaxy of secrets. We exist light years from one another. But there must be a time when space contracts, when the universe becomes as small as a pinprick.” If such a thing can indeed occur, THE SEEKERS OF DEER CREEK is that pinprick: a place where past and present collide, sisters find themselves and come home to each other, and an entire universe can be found between the covers of a book. Sweeping and epic in its emotion, it is sure to be a favorite among book clubs.