First published 2011
Sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo disappears in the chaos of Seoul's subway station, separated from her husband in the pressing crowds. Her adult children scramble to create missing person flyers, but they discover they lack a recent photograph of their mother. As they debate reward amounts and poster text, a deeper realization emerges: they barely know the woman who raised them. The family's search becomes an excavation of So-nyo's hidden life, told through the voices of her daughter, son, and husband. Each perspective reveals different fragments of a woman whose inner world remained largely invisible to those closest to her. The novel builds toward So-nyo's own voice, finally speaking her truth about sacrifice, unfulfilled dreams, and the person she was beyond her role as mother and wife. This story transforms a missing person case into an exploration of maternal identity and family blindness. The mystery of one lost mother becomes a question about all mothers and the lives they live separate from their families.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-blindness, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Seoul
Period: 21st-century
237 pages · Hardcover · Knopf