A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: Dallas Morning News *
Today.com * Good Housekeeping * Time * The Rumpus * The Week
* Salon * Seattle Times * Electric Literature * Bookpage * The
Millions * Elle.com * Washington Post * Book Riot * Lit Hub *
NPR's Here & Now * Ms. Magazine * Town & Country * New York Times *
USA Today * Sunset
From the bestselling author of ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW comes a searing
memoir of family, class and grief--a daughter's search to understand the
lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the
lives she's lost.
In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will
likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you'd hoped.
You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who
leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them.
Nicole Chung couldn't hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon
hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university
on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found
community and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle class
world she begins to raise a family in - where there are big homes,
college funds, nice vacations - looks very different from the middle
class world she thought she grew up in, where paychecks have to
stretch to the end of the week, health insurance is often lacking, and
there are no safety nets.
When her father dies at only sixty-seven, killed by diabetes and kidney
disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of
precarity and lack of access to healthcare contributed to his early
death. And then the unthinkable happens - less than a year later, her
beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance
between them becomes insurmountable as COVID-19 descends upon the world.
Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship
and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the
distance between one life, one home, and another - and sheds needed
light on some of the most persistent and grievous inequalities in
American society.
