They Bloom at Night

Gr 9 Up–After a devastating hurricane, the water keeps rising in tiny Mercy, LA, where a deadly, clinging red algae has begun to warp biology into something unrecognizable. To avoid the memories and dangers in town, Vietnamese American teen Nhung and her mom have been living on their family’s shrimp boat on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, catching increasingly rare seafood to afford to live. Forced to sell the most normal things they catch to local business criminal Jimmy Boudreaux, they have no way out when he demands they hunt down whoever (or whatever) is responsible for a string of local disappearances; Nhung’s mother’s attempts to resist leave her with a raging tetanus infection. Jimmy’s sharp-edged daughter Covey and Nhung forge ahead into Mercy, where the difference between hunter and hunted is hard to discern. As Nhung struggles with familial and cultural expectations, especially those tied to gender, she diverges from the path she has long felt was inevitable and allows herself to contemplate becoming something more authentic. After all, there is beauty to be found even in the darkest of places. Tran’s adeptness with body horror resurfaces in this sophomore novel; the shifting environment of south Louisiana can be dangerous and untrustworthy at the best of times, perfectly suited to blurred boundaries between science and reality and powerful emotional reckonings.