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Serk grew up Korean in Japan and in the 1960s emigrates to a university town on the east coast of the United States. There he marries Anne, an American searching for meaning; both have broken with their own families, and they have a daughter, Louisa. When she is ten they spend a summer in a seaside town in Japan, where Serk is on leave from his American post. One night he and Louisa go for a walk on the sea wall. Louisa is found on the sand the next day, nearly drowned and with no memory of what happened, and Serk is gone. Mother and daughter go back to America and live side by side more like lodgers than family, while the truth about Serk's disappearance unfolds over decades and across several countries.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family, Migration (assigned by AI)

Set in

United States, Japan

First published

2025

Author's age

56 when first published

ISBN

9780374616373 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, United States)

9781787335127 (Jonathan Cape, United Kingdom)

9781529932515 (Vintage, United Kingdom)

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Wikidata