What We Kept to Ourselves

May 1, 2023

John Kim is distraught; not only has his wife, Sunny, vanished, but the stranger he's just found dead in the backyard is carrying a letter addressed to her. With his grown children, he begins investigating, and the story unwinds to the late 1970s, when a pregnant Sunny had just moved with workaholic John from Korea to Los Angeles and finds herself isolated and miserable. From the author of the New York Times best-selling, Reese's Book Club--honored The Last Story of Mina Lee. Prepub Alert.

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August 1, 2023
The year-old disappearance of a Korean immigrant woman in Los Angeles is still a mystery to her family when a dead Black man with a letter addressed to her appears in their yard. Sunhee "Sunny" Kim did not seem like the kind of mother who would vanish without a word from the lives of her daughter, Ana, a college graduate, and her son, Ronald--but there is much about the family's situation that is, as the title of Kim's second novel suggests, hidden from view. Sunny's relationship with her husband, John, a man deeply damaged by the atrocities and dislocations of the Korean War, is far from nurturing, and the family has not recovered from the burning of their gas station during the Rodney King riots. The complicated timeline, moving between the end of 1999 and earlier periods going back to 1977, very gradually provides answers to myriad questions: Why did Sunny leave? What was her relationship to the dead homeless man, Ronald "RJ" Jones, after whom she named her son, letting her husband believe it was for Ronald Reagan? Why was RJ estranged from his daughter, Rhonda, whose quest for answers about the father she never knew becomes entwined with Ana and Ronald's? What was the expos� RJ was working on about the LAPD, where he was a janitor in the 1980s, and did he hide his evidence with Sunny, and is this why people are being mysteriously followed and murdered in the days after his death? If it sounds very complicated, it really is, and Kim doles out answers very, very slowly, spending a great deal of time reviewing and rereviewing the thoughts of each character, often having them consider stiffly phrased political questions. "While she had been speaking with Priscilla, the realization--that Ana, too, was a beneficiary of this specific system under which so many like RJ had been harmed--crept throughout her body. She had worked hard, yes, and up until high school, displayed excellence in all the subjects that centered the perspectives and accomplishments of gatekeepers (mostly, straight white men)." When answers to our questions finally come, in intense, violent scenes at the end of the book, it is a welcome relief. A potentially propulsive tale suffers from a slow reveal and too many public service announcements.

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August 14, 2023
Kim follows up The Last Story of Mina Lee with an ambitious if unwieldy look at the lives of the Korean-American Kim family: patriarch John; his wife, Sunny; and their children, college-age Ana and high school senior Ronald. The action kicks off in 1999 Los Angeles, a year after Sunny has left the family with little explanation. One afternoon, John discovers a body in the family’s backyard, and in the dead man’s hand is a letter addressed to Sunny. Police are quick to declare the death an accident and move on, but Ana and Ronald are eager to identify the deceased and find out what linked him to their mother. Flashbacks to the 1970s flesh out John and Sunny’s relationship, their early lives in Korea, and Sunny’s difficulty adjusting to America when she and John arrive in Los Angeles. Kim sets a laundry list of worthy themes in her crosshairs—including racial discrimination, police corruption, and the struggles of Asian women in and out of the family—and explores them sensitively, but sometimes stumbles in wedding those themes to the novel’s plot. The resulting speed bumps aren’t a deal-breaker, but they make it difficult to remain engaged in the central mystery. Still, strong prose and evident passion make this worthwhile. Agent: Amy Bishop, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

Starred review from September 1, 2023
Kim follows up her best-selling debut novel, The Last Story of Mina Lee (2020) with a slow-burner suspense tale. In 1977, newlyweds John and Sunny Kim leave Korea for California in pursuit of the ever-promising American Dream and plan to start a family. But Sunny misses her family and friends, struggles with culture shock, and is unhappy in her marriage. In 1982, Sunny is waiting at a bus stop when her water breaks, and a kind stranger helps her--a pivotal moment of awakening self-discovery. Jumping ahead to 1999, John and Sunny's daughter, Anastasia, has graduated from UC Berkeley, son Ronald is a senior in high school, and John is trying to keep his wits and family together after Sunny disappeared a year ago. After a man's body is found in the Kims' backyard holding a letter to Sunny in his hand, Ronald and Anastasia try to find out who this stranger is, what he meant to their mother, and perhaps, an explanation for their mother's disappearance. Kim's second novel is hard to put down, unique, haunting, and beautifully written, as the author slowly weaves layer upon layer in an intricate, mysterious web.

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