This was so vast, so epic, it spanned the century, encapsulated lives and lifetimes, hopes of yet displaced persons, the inner dreams of a swallowed nation…and the characters absorbed the page, some apologetic for their existence, others ashamed and floundering, a few burst, boisterous—the remaining diaspora voices of a scattered Pyongyang intelligentsia and working-class, all beautiful, longing for a stolen homeland, the invisible past of wiped geography and shifted borders... 

The novel is fiction wrapped in so much truth, wrought with the pain of bitter and broken hearts, yet shining with the beauty of forgiveness, and delivering immense hope for a promising future.

The characters are rich and real, and I was only upset at not being able to spend more time with the especially wonderful people we met along the way.

Both a history lesson and a moral on forgiveness and love—particularly between two cultures so closely knit, yet so distinctly dissimilar at their cores—the novel reminds us of what matters in culture, what is vital to keep, and of what matters even more: who we become in our sharing, our love, our choice to vindicate rather than retaliate.