Spanning over 30 years, Eric Nguyen's debut novel Things We Lost to the Water is epic in scope but finely tuned into its characters' perceptions, anxieties and fraught relationships. It is an immigration story and a family narrative about secrets that divide and experiences that bind people together over decades and across oceans. Nguyen is a masterful composer, pulling readers close with quiet moments of striking emotion and then widening the scope for sonorous knells of grand devastation.

In 1978, Hương is in her early 20s and pregnant with her second child when she flees Saigon by boat with her young son, Tuấn. Her husband, Công, is supposed to come with them, but at the last moment they are separated. The boat takes Hương and Tuấn to Singapore, where Hương gives birth to her second son, Bình, and a refugee organization arranges ...