The Seekers of Deer Creek
By Thao Thai
Mariner
All children are artists. They draw and paint unselfconsciously, and their ideas are only constrained by the limits of their fine motor skills. It’s keeping that mindset into adulthood that’s the challenge.
In Thao Thai’s sophomore novel, “The Seekers of Deer Creek,” estranged sisters Vivi and Calla have found their own ways to keep their art alive. Calla is a professional artist while Vivi has set her own art aside for a stable job as an art conservator for a museum. After their father dies leaving behind a sketch and a letter belonging to a mysterious painter, K.P. Lý, they embark on a journey to uncover a lost work of art that they believe their late father hoped they would find together. The quest leads them back to the Wisconsin woods of their childhood and then across two other continents. The storyline itself unfolds between a combination of letters, flashbacks, and scenes from 2022, when the bulk of the story is set.
Calla and Vivi are opposites. Calla is a recovering addict who’s rash and a little flighty. Vivi has oriented her life around stability. Both of them have demons they’re trying to avoid. Vivi became a third parent to Calla after their mom left them as kids, and it’s led to complications in their dynamic. The two of them are forced back together to uncover this mystery with implications for their family history.
Thai is a gifted storyteller who has conjured a contagious love for art. Though Lý is a fictional painter, one can’t help but long to see the piece at the center of the book in all its vivid and blue glory. It’s rare that a book makes you want to love the subject as much as the characters.
It takes a careful reader to uncover the mystery along with the Nguyễn sisters. There’s a lot that’s revealed later in the book which causes one to see the beginning in a new light, but Thai makes it well worth it.
“The Seekers of Deer Creek” is a journey, not just in the literal sense but also in the way it explores Calla and Vivi’s paths, and in the end, Thai resists the urge to tie it all up neatly in a bow. The ending is also a beginning, a reminder that there are more stories to be told.
