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All her life, Korea-born Lee Soon-Min has been told that her biological parents were killed in an automobile crash. (As an infant, she was adopted by a repressive but well-meaning midwestern couple who renamed her Sarah). In truth, Sarah was abandoned on the steps of a Seoul firehouse soon after her mother, penniless and jilted by her American lover, gave birth. When Sarah, now 19, travels to Korea, she becomes obsessed with discovering the truth about her past. She studies Korean, visits the agency that orchestrated her adoption, even broadcasts her predicament on a local television show. The author's use of alternating narrators keeps the plot in high gear, as the paths of mother and daughter seem destined to converge. Her colorful characters crackle and pop off the page: a restaurant owner with a "rosary of farts trailing out from between her thick thighs" and a malaprop-spewing Korean soldier who suggests that an emotionally troubled peer see a "shrimp." Lee, a Korean American, has earned critical acclaim for her books for young adults, including Finding My Voice (1992). Here she renders a grown-up gem of a novel where joy mingles with sorrow, and heartbreak is laced with hope.
Starred Booklist Review by Allison BlockCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Marie Myung-Ok Lee is an acclaimed Korean American writer, author of three young adult novels, including Finding My Voice and Saying Goodbye, graduated from Brown University. Her stories and essays have been published in Witness, The Kenyon Review, Newsweek, and the New York Times. She was a Fulbright Scholar to Korea in creative writing and has received many honors for her work, including an O. Henry honorable mention for an adaptation of a chapter in this novel, the Best Book Award from the Friends of American Writers, and a Best Book for Young Adults citation from the American Library Association. She has been a MacDowell Colony fellow and has served as a National Book Award judge for young people's literature, and she is a founder of the Asian American Writers' Workshop. She is currently a visiting scholar and lecturer at Brown University.
Biographical information on Marie Lee is available in the Oxford Companion to Women�s Literature (Oxford University Press) and Who's Who of Asian Americans (Gale Publications).
EMAIL: Somebodysdaughter2005@yahoo.com
BLOG: GreenFertility.blogspot.com
Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
www.beacon.org
SALES INFORMATION:
Booksellers and other resellers can order through Houghton Mifflin: 1-800-225-3362.
Organizations wishing to order more than 10 copies are eligible for discounts.
Author photo courtesy of Maria Mendez-Garcia.
