a novel by christina park
Inspired by a true story, soulful and God-fearing Nara Lee carries a painful secret and a corrosive guilt.
Set against an historical backdrop when Korea was a colony and citizenry was rendered impotent, Nara’s life was forged in 1919, the year of the March First Movement. It is her journey from the ancestral home of her father, a nobleman, to an insidious orphanage to a forced-labour factory during the 'Occupation'. When colonialism had outlived its usefulness, she is emancipated only to live through an era of high suspicion and treason. She is forced into a squalid tent city after surviving the tragedy of the 1953 Busan Fire that left 28,000 people homeless. Finally staggering headlong to a new life in Vancouver, Canada, she elucidates the poetry of home: the loss of home is like the loss of identity.
Amidst violence and abject injustice, Nara finds a way to rise up from the ashes again and again to rejoice in small triumphs in the homes she lived, in the homes she lost.
Set against an historical backdrop when Korea was a colony and citizenry was rendered impotent, Nara’s life was forged in 1919, the year of the March First Movement. It is her journey from the ancestral home of her father, a nobleman, to an insidious orphanage to a forced-labour factory during the 'Occupation'. When colonialism had outlived its usefulness, she is emancipated only to live through an era of high suspicion and treason. She is forced into a squalid tent city after surviving the tragedy of the 1953 Busan Fire that left 28,000 people homeless. Finally staggering headlong to a new life in Vancouver, Canada, she elucidates the poetry of home: the loss of home is like the loss of identity.
Amidst violence and abject injustice, Nara finds a way to rise up from the ashes again and again to rejoice in small triumphs in the homes she lived, in the homes she lost.