by Susan Choi
First published 2025
Ten-year-old Louisa walks with her father Serk along the breakwater one summer evening. He carries a flashlight and cannot swim. Hours later, rescuers find Louisa on the beach, drenched and barely conscious. Serk has disappeared without a trace. Louisa and her mother Anne must rebuild their lives around this absence. Serk was Korean but raised in Japan, cut off from family who moved to North Korea after the war. Anne fled her Midwestern roots after youthful mistakes. Both parents had severed ties with their pasts, leaving Louisa with few anchors when tragedy strikes. The arrival of Tobias, Anne's son from before her marriage, shifts the family dynamic in unexpected ways. Mother and daughter circle each other in their shared grief, sometimes drawing close, sometimes pushing away. They cannot stop returning to that night by the water, trying to understand what happened. The story moves between characters and across decades, following the ripples of one family's loss as larger historical forces shape their lives. Louisa grows up haunted by questions about her father's fate and her own fragmented memories of their final walk together.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: grief, loss, missing-person
Setting: Japan, Korea, Midwest, North Korea
Period: 20th-century, World War II
464 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: death