The Evening Hero, which releases May 24th, has made it onto Oprah’s list at number 11 as one of the top books to welcome the spring reading season.
The Evening Hero is a novel that follows the journey of a Korean immigrant who pursues the American dream. Everything seems to be going well for Dr. Yungman Kwak, who has a thriving career working as an obstetrician in a rural Minnesota town.
One day, he gets a life-changing letter. Everything he thought he knew about his life was a life, and he won’t be able to move on and keep his world from falling apart, which it is until he confronts the past. The story goes back and forth in time to Korea and America in the story’s vignettes as Dr. Kwak contends with rural hospital closures, anti-Asian racism, and how war trauma seeps into his everyday life. Yungman’s life is suddenly chaos—the hospital abruptly closes, his wife refuses to spend time with him, and his son is busy investing in a struggling health start-up. Dana Spiotta, the author of Innocents and Others, says that The Evening Hero“ skewers the medical-industrial complex and the deep inequity of contemporary America.”
While about some serious subjects, the book has comedic undertones that intertwine the stories. Oprah’s book club’s write-up says that The Evening Hero tells Dr. Yungman Kwak’s story while “deftly moving between Korea and the Midwest, the past and the present, to capture the duplicitous nature of the American Dream.”
Yungman faces a serious choice—he must choose to hide his secret from his family and friends or confess and potentially lose all he’s built. He begins to question the very assumptions on which his life is built—the so-called American dream, with the abject failure of its healthcare system, patients and neighbors who perpetuate racism, a town flawed with infrastructure, and a history that doesn’t see him in it. Author Alexandra Kleeman of Something New Under the Sun says that The Evening Hero is “an urgent and insightful gaze on lived identity, positioned precariously at the intersection of past and future, homeland and adopted home.”
The Evening Hero comes out in hardcover and digital formats on May 24th, 2022. You can buy the book from various platforms, including Barnes and Noble, Bookshop, Indiebound, and Amazon. You add it to your wishlist, or you can place a pre-order today for The Evening Hero.