The Mango Tree

Tometich opens with an irresistible hook — her mother, a Filipino immigrant, arrested for firing a BB gun at a man stealing mangoes from the family tree in Fort Myers — and uses it as an entry point into a much thornier portrait of a mixed-race household shaped by an abusive, alcoholic father and a mother whose fierce, unconventional love is never separable from her volatility. Tometich's background as a food and restaurant writer shows in how sensory and specific the book gets about cooking, hunger, and the mango tree itself as a family fixture. Some of that specificity thins out toward the end, where the narrative moves faster than the earlier chapters' patient scene-setting, but the portrait of the mother stays the book's center of gravity throughout.