Nancy Jooyoun Kim

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'I loved this book so much' REESE WITHERSPOON 'Suspenseful and deeply felt...raises questions about the reality of the American dream and illuminates stories that often go untold, in life as well as fiction' CHLOE BENJAMIN Reminiscent of Celeste Ng's page-turning meditations on identity, this searing mother-daughter story explores the diverse and unsettling realities of being an immigrant in America. Margot Lee's mother is ignoring her calls. Margot cannot understand why, until she makes a surprise trip home to Koreatown, LA. What she finds there makes her realise how little she knows about her mother, Mina. Thirty years earlier, Mina Lee steps off a plane to take a chance on a new life in America. Stacking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing she expects is to fall in love. But that moment will have shattering consequences for Mina, and everything she left behind in Seoul. Through the intimate lens of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand each other, Margot and Mina's story unravels the unspoken secrets that can drive two people apart - or perhaps bind them closer together. --- 'Painful, joyous... A story that cries out to be told' LA TIMES 'Carefully illuminates the two sides of the silence between a Korean immigrant mother and her Korean American daughter, a silence only too familiar to many of us - and emerges with a stunningly powerful and original novel' ALEXANDER CHEE 'A timely, important novel... Fans of Celeste Ng won't be able to put down this heartfelt, cross-generational novel about the powerful bond and fragility of family and what it really means to strive for the "American dream"' POPSUGAR --- Readers fell in love with Margot and Mina... 'Beautifully rendered. Achingly sweet. Enjoyable story with wonderfully realistic characters that you want to follow' 'An emotionally gripping story of loss and belonging' 'I LOVED THIS BOOK' 'This book is filled with wonderful characters, a story to please and mouth-watering Korean food' 'It speaks to all women who have been marginalized by their families or society at large'

the Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick

The Last Story of Mina Lee

The New York Times bestselling author of the “timely, important” (PopSugar) The Last Story of Mina Lee returns with a propulsive and suspenseful new novel about a family that unravels when a stranger—who may hold the key to their missing mother—is found dead in their backyard. 1999: The Kim family is struggling to move on with their lives after their mother, Sunny, vanished a year ago. Sixty-one-year-old John Kim feels more isolated from his grown children, Anastasia and Ronald, than ever before. But one evening, their fragile lives are further upended when John discovers the body of a dead stranger in the backyard. The tragedy seems random until it’s revealed that the dead man was carrying a letter to Sunny, sparking a desperate investigation into the stranger’s history and possible connections to Sunny—only to discover that someone has been watching them. 1977: Sunny is pregnant and has just moved to Los Angeles from Korea with her work-obsessed husband. America is not turning out the way she had dreamed it to be, and the loneliness and isolation is broken only by a fateful encounter at a bus stop. The unexpected connection spans the decades and echoes into the family’s lives in the present as they uncover devastating secrets that put not only everything they thought they knew about their mother at risk, but their very lives as well. Both a riveting page-turner and moving family story, What We Kept to Ourselves masterfully explores the consequences of secrets between parents and children, husbands and wives, the search for home when all seems lost, and what it means to dream in America.

A Novel

What We Kept to Ourselves

"Margot Lee's mother isn't returning her calls. It's a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown and finds her mother dead under suspicious circumstances. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the facts of Mina's life as a Korean War orphan and undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother"--Dust jacket flap.

Nancy Jooyoun Kim

About

Books

Join the club