The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong by L. Tam Holland (review)

Both Vee's Chinese father and his Texan mother are silent about their pasts, so when Vee faces a family history assignment, the sophomore cops one off the internet, inventing a grandfather who escaped the Nanking massacre. His powers of invention go even further, however, when he has his platonic-so-far friend Madison, who attends Chinese school, forge a letter from Vee's Chinese grandparents that states they want to see Vee and his father. Vee maintains his deception until his parents agree to take him and Madison to China to see Madison's relatives and meet Vee's own grandparents. Vee's sharp tongue and bad attitude make him hard to like at first, but it's precisely his aggressive stubbornness that enables him to break through his parents' silences and force them to tell him what he certainly has a right to know. His parents' love for him and his father's goofy sense of humor ultimately rescue them all as they find Vee's grandfather (his grandmother has passed away) in a nursing home with a slim grasp on his memory, and Vee comes to understand the value of what he has rather than lamenting what he has missed. With his questions answered and a romance with Madison in its first blush, Vee's character arc takes a sharp and gratifying turn toward maturity. Vee's narrative voice is lyrical, full of witty snark and credible sophomore angst, and Holland works in an effective metaphor of unearthing family histories that may never satisfy by giving Vee a fascination with Peking Man. Besides being a stylistically compelling coming-of-age narrative with a warm nuclear family dynamic, this will be a boon for collections in need of high-quality titles featuring contemporary Asian-American protagonists.