White Chrysanthemum

November 13, 2017
Bracht’s debut novel explores the horrors of war and the fortitude of familial bonds. In 1943 Korea, 16-year-old Hana is a haenyeo, a female diver who helps support her family with the catches she finds in the sea. But her life is forever altered when, in an attempt to hide her little sister, Emi, from a Japanese soldier, she is captured and forced to work at a brothel as a prostitute for Japanese soldiers in Manchuria. The story jumps forward to 2011, when Emi is in Seoul to visit her daughter, to find her sister, and to participate in the weekly Wednesday demonstrations that are held in front of the Japanese embassy to demand justice for the “comfort women” who were forced to become prostitutes during World War II. Emi has carried her guilt about Hana’s abduction for decades, but now believes she may finally have a chance to find out what happened to her sister. Masterfully crafted, Bracht’s mesmerizing debut novel is rich with historical detail and depth of emotion. This is a memorable story about the courage of Korean women during the Second World War. Agent: Rowan Lawton, Furniss Lawton Agency.

Narrator Greta Jung tells the heartbreaking story of two sisters who were parted by history and their intervening years of pain in Japanese-occupied Korea. Hana and Emi are fisherwomen, known as HAENYEO. As the two sisters are separated by conflict, oppression, and time, Jung's soft voice brings across the grief of irredeemable tragedy. Soldiers are an ever-present danger, and one day Hana is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice. She becomes a sex slave, a "comfort woman," to the Japanese army for years. The chapters journey forward and backward in time, taking listeners from the harsh realities of Korea in the mid 1940s to Emi's guilt as an old woman who is searching for her older sister. Jung captures the love and loss in her lyrical delivery. M.R. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine