A Recommended Book From:
USA Today * The Chicago Tribune * Book Riot * Refinery 29 * InStyle
* The Minneapolis Star-Tribune * Publishers Weekly *
Baltimore Outloud * Omnivoracious * Lambda Literary * Goodreads *
Lit Hub * The Millions
FINALIST FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE
WINNER OF THE NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARD
From award-winning author Lysley Tenorio, comes a big hearted debut
novel following an undocumented Filipino son as he navigates his
relationship with his mother, an uncertain future, and the place he
calls home
Excel spends his days trying to seem like an unremarkable American
teenager. When he's not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed
pizza shop) or passing the time with his girlfriend Sab (occasionally in
one of their town's seventeen cemeteries), he carefully avoids the
spotlight.
But Excel knows that his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima,
was once a Filipina B-movie action star who now makes her living
scamming men online. The old man they live with is not his grandfather,
but Maxima's lifelong martial arts trainer. And years ago, on Excel's
tenth birthday, Maxima revealed a secret that he must keep forever. "We
are 'TNT'--tago ng tago," she told him, "hiding and hiding." Excel is
undocumented--and one accidental slip could uproot his entire life.
Casting aside the paranoia and secrecy of his childhood, Excel takes a
leap, joining Sab on a journey south to a ramshackle desert town called
Hello City. Populated by drifters, old hippies, and washed-up
techies--and existing outside the normal constructs of American
society--Hello City offers Excel a chance to forge his own path for the
first time. But after so many years of trying to be invisible, who does
he want to become? And is it possible to put down roots in a country
that has always considered you an outsider?
Thrumming with energy and at once critical and hopeful, The Son of Good
Fortune is a luminous story of a mother and son testing the strength of
their bond to their country--and to each other.
