Nước — the Vietnamese word for country and water
— permeates Eric Nguyen's haunting debut. Signifying both a place of origin and the means by which a boat refugee departs from such place of origin,
Things We Lost to the Water poignantly explores all the ways in which Vietnamese refugees are affected by country and water — in sum, by dislocation.
Told from multiple perspectives and spanning 27 years, from 1978 to 2005,
Things We Lost to the Water gracefully manages to be both panoramic and specific, allegorical and literal. Most of the story takes place in New Orleans, Louisiana, with subsidized apartments, dilapidated shotgun houses, colorful duplexes, and the trash-strewn bayou — where refugees discard their unwanted mementos — as backdrop. At the novel's outset, Hương has just arrived in the city with her two young sons, five-year-old Tuấn and baby Ben, after a harrowing escape by sea and a crowded, stressful stay at a Singaporean refugee camp. Công — Hương's husband — has, at the last moment, chosen to remain in Vietnam. His absence will cast a long shadow upon the family in the ensuing years.