A POPSUGAR Best Book of December 2020
An AMAZON Editors Pick December 2020
A SHE READS Best Historical Fiction Novel Winter 2021
A BUSTLE Most Anticipated Winter 2021 Read
A LIBRO.FM Influencer Pick, December 2020
Inspired by true events on Korea's Jeju Island, Sumi Hahn's "entrancing
[debut] novel, brimming with lyricism and magic" (Jennifer Rosner,
The Yellow Bird Sings) explores what it means to truly love in the
wake of devastation.
In the aftermath of World War II, Goh Junja is a girl just coming into
her own. She is the latest successful deep sea diver in a family of
strong haenyeo. Confident she is a woman now, Junja urges her mother to
allow her to make the Goh family's annual trip to Mt. Halla, where they
trade abalone and other sea delicacies for pork. Junja, a sea village
girl, has never been to the mountains, where it smells like mushrooms
and earth. While there, she falls in love with a mountain boy Yang
Suwol, who rescues her after a particularly harrowing journey. But when
Junja returns one day later, it is just in time to see her mother take
her last breath, beaten by the waves during a dive she was taking in
Junja's place.
Spiraling in grief, Junja sees her younger siblings sent to live with
their estranged father. Everywhere she turns, Junja is haunted by the
loss of her mother, from the meticulously tended herb garden that has
now begun to sprout weeds, to the field where their bed sheets are
beaten. She has only her grandmother and herself. But the world moves on
without Junja.
The political climate is perilous. Still reeling from Japan's forced
withdrawal from the peninsula, Korea is forced to accommodate the rapid
establishment of US troops. Junja's canny grandmother, who lived through
the Japanese invasion that led to Korea's occupation understands the
signs of danger all too well. When Suwol is arrested for working with
and harboring communists, and the perils of post-WWII overtake her
homelands, Junja must learn to navigate a tumultuous world unlike
anything she's ever known.
