Miracle Creek

Starred review from January 1, 2019
A Byzantine web of lies surrounds a fatal fire at an unusual treatment facility in this taut legal drama.Kim, a former trial lawyer who turns 50 the same week her debut novel is published, does not make it easy on the reviewer charged with describing her book. This is a complicated and unusual story--though when you are reading it, it will all seem smooth as silk. The Yoos, an immigrant family from Korea, own a hyperbaric oxygen therapy tank in a town called Miracle Creek, Virginia. (In a characteristically wry aside, we learn that "Miracle Creek didn't look like a place where miracles took place, unless you counted the miracle of people living there for years without going insane from boredom.") HBOT treatment, which involves sitting in a chamber breathing pure, pressurized oxygen, is believed to be effective in remediating autism and male infertility, and those conditions are what define the group of people who are in the "submarine" when a fire, clearly set by an arsonist, causes it to explode. Two people are killed; others survive paralyzed or with amputations. The novel opens as the murder trial of the mother of a boy who died in the fire begins. As we come to understand the pressures she has been under as the single mother of a special needs child, it does not seem out of the question that she is responsible. But with all the other characters lying so desperately about what they were doing that evening, it can't be as simple as that. With so many complications and loose ends, one of the miracles of the novel is that the author ties it all together and arrives at a deeply satisfying--though not easy or sentimental--ending.Intricate plotting and courtroom theatrics, combined with moving insight into parenting special needs children and the psychology of immigrants, make this book both a learning experience and a page-turner. Should be huge.

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March 1, 2019
In Miracle Creek, Virginia, recent Korean immigrant Pak Yoo has staked his family's future on the Miracle Submarine, a hyperbaric oxygen chamber reputed to heal a range of conditions, from autism to infertility. When a fire beneath the chamber's oxygen tanks causes an explosion that kills two of his patients, Pak is paralyzed while trying to rescue the survivors. Now, Pak's client Elizabeth Ward is on trial for intentionally starting the fire that killed her autistic son, Henry, and her friend, Kitt. As the trial opens, Elizabeth seems deserving of the rage crinkling the courtroom's atmosphere: she researched hyperbaric-chamber-fire fatalities; excused herself from that evening's treatment; and insisted that Henry take the seat linked to the exploding tank. But once her attorney begins to pick apart the prosecution witnesses' testimony, Elizabeth's and the Yoos' alternating narratives slowly unveil secrets that paint a more complex picture of the crime. Powerful courtroom scenes invite comparisons to Scott Turow, but Kim's nuanced exploration of guilt, resentment, maternal love, and multifaceted justice may have stronger appeal for readers drawn to the Shakespearean tragedies in Chris Bohjalian's Midwives (1997) and William Landay's Defending Jacob (2012).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

Starred review from March 1, 2019

Picture it: somewhere in rural Virginia, there's an experimental medical device called the Miracle Submarine, a pressurized oxygen chamber in which hopefuls take therapeutic "dives" that could cure them of issues like autism or infertility. Then the device explodes, killing two people, and owners Young and Pak Yoo must face a murder trial. Kim, a former lawyer and winner of the Wabash Prize in Fiction, is also the mother of an actual "submarine" patient, lending authenticity to the story. A Farrar Reading Group Selection.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2019

Picture it: somewhere in rural Virginia, there's an experimental medical device called the Miracle Submarine, a pressurized oxygen chamber in which hopefuls take therapeutic "dives" that could cure them of issues like autism or infertility. Then the device explodes, killing two people, and owners Young and Pak Yoo must face a murder trial. Kim, a former lawyer and winner of the Wabash Prize in Fiction, is also the mother of an actual "submarine" patient, lending authenticity to the story. A Farrar Reading Group Selection.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.