The Son of Good Fortune: A Novel
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The Son of Good Fortune: A Novel
Product Description A Recommended Book From:USA Today * The Chicago Tribune * Book Riot * Refinery 29 * The Minneapolis Star-Tribune * Publishers Weekly * Baltimore Outloud * Omnivoracious * Lambda Literary * Goodreads * Lit Hub * The MillionsFrom 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 homeExcel 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. Review “Tenorio’s insistence on the specificity of his characters’ dreams and longings is its own kind of argument for their right to be here…. An affecting portrayal of just how potently a parent can shape the expectations of her child…. His story is a tribute to the extreme inner strength it takes to make any life decision look like fate.” (New York Times Book Review)“Sharp and compassionate…. Tenorio is a gifted, expressive writer about the Filipino American diaspora…. A powerful story about what it takes to uncover a sense of oneself when you’ve been forced to keep it under wraps.” (USA Today)“Lysley Tenorio’s funny and poignant second novel, The Son of Good Fortune, couldn’t come at a better time…. Tenorio skillfully wrings high comedy from his characters’ boxed-in lives in a country that doesn’t know what to do with them…. Timely.” (San Francisco Chronicle)"When you don’t belong where you are, where exactly do you belong? Lysley Tenorio’s engaging and comic first novel about immigration and identity asks this question with compassion and savage humor." (Minneapolis Star Tribune)“[The Son of Good Fortune is] a reminder that many experiences comprise the definition of what makes a person American…. Tenorio skillfully sketches out what an all-American boy like Excel experiences in his in-betweenness…. A damning yet clear-eyed acknowledgement that for many, the American dream is merely survival.” (Salon)“A bewitching and highly approachable novel on what it’s like to be an undocumented American…. With his sensitive and subdued style of writing, Tenorio has crafted a novel that speaks to the experience of the undocumented, as well to what we all must hide in order to survive.” (San Diego Union-Tribune)"Filled with the kind of absurdities that accompany the most difficult truths, Lysley Tenorio's brilliant, witty novel about the love of a mother and son, the immigrant experience in America, and the surreality of our current reality, is bold, ambitious, and unforgettable." (Refinery 29)“[A] fierce, revelatory literary experience…. Tenorio has written a resonant story about what one family is willing to do to “protect the child.” It’s seamlessly interwoven with cogent explorations of hybrid identity, racism, immigration history, shifting familial bonds, parental sacrifice, socioeconomic disparity, and even alternative social models…. [Tenorio] humanizes the lives imperiled by shifting immigration policies.” (Christian Science Monitor)"Mordant and moving.... Written with great empathy and sly humor.... This is a wonderful achievement." (Publishers Weekly (starred review))"You know the feeling of picking up a book and realizing within ten pages that what you’re reading is something... special? Something different? Well, that’s what it’s like reading Lysley Tenorio’s novel.... A funny and kind novel about home and identity." (Omnivoracious) Amazon.com Review An Amazon Best Book of July 2020: The Son of Good Fortune is a novel about a mother, Maxima, and her son, Excel, who are undocumented Filipino immigrants living in California. They each do their best to make money, blend in, and not get caught by the authorities. But what they do is not what you might expect: Maxima seduces men on the internet, eventually cajoling them to wire her money, while Excel flees to a hippie commune with his girlfriend and begins to wonder if he could make it his home. Lysley Tenorio’s characters are vibrant and empathetic. Maxima is juiced up with the confidence of having been a Filipina action star in B-movies and is determined to do whatever it takes to be in America, while her son grapples with the invisible target on his back and what life could be like if he wasn’t TNT—tago ng tago, or “hiding and hiding.” The Son of Good Fortune is a bighearted novel that disguises poverty, displacement, and disenchantment with hearty laughs and wacky characters. But don’t let that fool you—Tenorio writes with gusto and compassion about the undocumented.—Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review About the Author Lysley Tenorio is the author of the novel The Son of Good Fortune and the story collection Monstress, named a book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Stegner fellowship, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Bogliasco Foundation. His stories have appeared in the Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Ploughshares, and have been adapted for the stage by The American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the Ma-Yi Theater in New York City. He is a professor at Saint Mary’s College of California.
