suburbia

Together for 15 years, I had met Joe in suburbia at Bogies, a.k.a.

A Thomas Kinkade painting of 1950s-era white picket fence suburbia straight out of “Leave It to Beaver,” with the caption “Protect the Homeland.”

Over a dinner of “Mac’s Famous Mac and Cheese,” a gloopy, highlighter-yellow bowl of boxed pasta, they raise their forks in agreement: suburbia will be a breeze.

“Escaping the mundane life of suburbia was really what influenced my childhood,” Nguyen says.

She structures her narrative chronologically, conveyed in present tense, newsreel-style, evoking the Pacific Northwest’s woodsy tang and bland suburbia.