The Son of Good Fortune: A Luminous Coming-of-Age Story About an Undocumented Son and His Mother's Unbreakable Bond

A Recommended Book From:USA Today * The Chicago Tribune * Book Riot * Refinery 29 * InStyle * The MinneapolisStar-Tribune * Publishers Weekly * Baltimore Outloud * Omnivoracious * Lambda Literary * Goodreads * Lit Hub * The MillionsFINALIST FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZEWINNER OF THE NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARDFrom award-winning author Lysley Tenorio,comes a big hearted debut novel following an undocumented Filipino son as henavigates his relationship with his mother, an uncertain future, and the placehe calls homeExcel spends his days trying to seem like an unremarkable Americanteenager. When he’s not working at The Pie Who Loved Me (a spy-themed pizzashop) or passing the time with his girlfriend Sab (occasionally in one of theirtown’s seventeen cemeteries), he carefully avoids the spotlight.But Excel knowsthat his family is far from normal. His mother, Maxima, was once a FilipinaB-movie action star who now makes her living scamming men online. The old manthey live with is not his grandfather, but Maxima’s lifelong martial artstrainer. And years ago, on Excel’s tenth birthday, Maxima revealed a secretthat he must keep forever. “We are ‘TNT’—tago ng tago,” she told him, “hiding andhiding.” Excel is undocumented—and one accidental slip could uproot his entirelife.Casting aside the paranoia and secrecy of his childhood, Excel takes aleap, joining Sab on a journey south to a ramshackle desert town called HelloCity. Populated by drifters, old hippies, and washed-up techies—and existingoutside the normal constructs of American society—Hello City offers Excel achance to forge his own path for the first time. But after so many years oftrying to be invisible, who does he want to become? And is it possible to putdown roots in a country that has always considered you an outsider?Thrummingwith energy and at once critical and hopeful, The Son of Good Fortune is aluminous story of a mother and son testing the strength of their bond to theircountry—and to each other. Read more