All that's left unsaid : a novel
(Book)

A young Vietnamese-Australian woman returns home to her family in the wake of her brother's murder and becomes determined to discover what happened in this exploration of the bonds of friendship, family, and community. Just let him go. These are the words Ky Tran will forever regret. The words she spoke when her parents called to ask if they should let her younger brother Denny out to celebrate his high school graduation with friends. That night Denny--optimistic, guideless, brilliant Denny--is brutally murdered inside a busy restaurant in the Sydney suburb Cabramatta, a refugee enclave facing violent crime, an indifferent police force, and the worst heroin epidemic in Australian history. Returning home to Cabramatta for the funeral, Ky learns that the police are stumped by Denny's case: a dozen people was at Lucky 8 restaurant when Denny died, but each of the bystanders claim to have seen nothing. Desperately hoping that understanding what happened might ease her suffocating guilt, Ky sets aside her grief and determines to track down the witnesses herself. With each encounter, she peels back another layer of the place that shaped her and Denny, exposing the seeds of violence that was planted well before that fateful celebration dinner: by colonialism, by the war in Vietnam, and by the choices they all made to survive.