Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born – a history whose epicentre is rooted in Vietnam – and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years. **SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2020** **A FINALIST FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD 2020**