In Juhea Kim’s sweeping new novel Beasts of a Little Land, a courtesan’s apprentice, an orphaned hustler, and a high-ranking Japanese officer weave in and out of each other’s lives during the tumultuous decades of the Japanese occupation of Korea. Loyalties, friendships, familial bonds, and first loves are tested amidst the backdrop of Korea’s fight for independence.
Ten years ago, during the height of North Dakota’s oil boom, my husband’s job at Motorola took him to Williston, ND to oversee a project building out the area’s cellular network. The weeks he spent on that project were some of the most difficult of his life, and his descriptions of the Wild West-like conditions…
“To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.” Wendall Berry I’ve read several books this year with strong environmental themes. The latest is Pastoral Song by James Rebanks, an eloquent recount of a British farmer’s attempt to turn his family farm into an environmentally friendly…
Erica’s Pick of the Week features a heroine to root for and a whole lot of twisted secrets.
Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is literary fiction. It is historical fiction. It is contemporary fiction. It is science fiction. It is a masterpiece. Anthony Doerr, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for his great World War II novel All the Light We Cannot See, has returned with an even better, more inventive creation. This genre-bending…
Shelf Life 