I confess, the cover caught my eye. Then I saw the blurb that said “A thrilling debut novel for fans of Liane Moriarty and Celeste Ng.” That did it, I was hooked. And once I started reading, I was all in. Now I want to suggest it for a book club, but how to describe it? Is it a courtroom drama? Legal thriller? Story about immigrant families? Families with special needs children? Caregiver burnout? It’s all of the above, so it’s hard to know where to start the description.
The story starts with ”The Incident,” told from the point of view of Young Yoo, a Korean immigrant who left Seoul in search of better opportunities for her daughter Mary. They live in Miracle Creek, Virginia, which “…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.” The second section tells the story of the trial of Elizabeth Ward, who was charged with murder as a result of “the incident.” It is presented in chapters told from the points of view of Elizabeth, Young, her daughter Mary Yoo, Matt Thompson, and Teresa Santiago.
The night of the ”incident,” Elizabeth dropped her son Henry off for an HBOT treatment at the facility owned by Young and her husband Pak. Although she generally stayed with Henry during his treatment (which took place in a pressurized oxygen chamber that resembled a submarine), that evening she went off to drink wine and smoke cigarettes nearby. Two people (including Henry) died and several others were injured by an explosion caused by the same brand of cigarettes as those Elizabeth was smoking, and she was vilified by many as the evidence was gathered.
After reading this book, I did some research on HBOT. In my ignorance I had thought that it was a. fictional treatment…but I learned that it is an oxygen treatment purportedly able to treat a wide variety of health issues, including autism, which was Henry’s diagnosis. As his full-time caregiver, Elizabeth was suffering from burnout, but it isn’t clear if it was severe enough for her to murder her son.
There is a lot going on in this book in addition to the legal drama. The struggle by Young and Pak was particularly relevant today, with the ongoing immigration debate in the U.S. Young and Pak started their wellness clinic in Miracle Creek, and found themselves struggling with the language, the dismissal of their HBOT treatments as silly “Eastern medicine”, and with being separated when Young and Mary came to the United States without Pak. It was wrenching to read of the struggle of immigrants such as Pak, a smart and eloquent man in his native Korean, who suffers the indignity of appearing unintelligent on the witness stand with his broken, accented English: “Pak Yoo was a different person in English than in Korean. In a way, he supposed, it was inevitable for immigrants to become child versions of themselves, stripped of their verbal fluency and, with it, a layer of their competence and maturity.”
All the characters seem to want the best for their families, but they beat themselves up in various ways trying to achieve it. Elizabeth was driven to the edge by being the mother and primary caregiver for her autistic son, Young worked such incredibly long hours that she became a stranger to her daughter, and Pak was a “goose father” (he stayed behind in Korea for several years and made an annual migratory visit to see his wife and daughter).
As I learned after I finished the book, Angie Kim has personal experience with HBOT. Knowing she had used it to treat her son gave more impact to her writing lines such as “Having a special-needs child didn’t just change you; it transmuted you, transported you to a parallel world with an altered gravitational axis.”
No spoilers, but it is fascinating and entertaining on several levels. Angie Kim can WRITE! Five stars, and thanks to Farrar, Straus & Giroux/ Sarah Crichton and NetGalley for providing a copy in exchange for this honest review.