Korean American author Angela Mi Young Hur (The Queens of K-Town) takes readers on a soul-searching journey across the globe in Folklorn, a genre-blending novel that intricately mixes family drama and folklore.
Particle physicist and second-generation Korean American Elsa Park studies neutrinos at Amundsen Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica, a "geeky Shangri-la on planet Hoth" a world away from her catatonic mother, angry father and schizophrenic brother. As she prepares to return to Stockholm, her invisible friend from childhood appears to her, reminding her that her mother believed the women of their family are cursed to remember and repeat the lives of their female ancestors as described in folktales.
Elsa worries she may have inherited her mother's mental health problems and questions the meaning behind her mother's stories. In Stockholm, sexy Korean Swedish professor Oskar answers her folklore questions and tries to work his way into her tightly guarded heart. When bad news draws her home to California, she must come to terms with her family and solve the mystery of whether she has a living sister.
Hur intertwines Korean folktales about sacrificed girls with meditations on science, generational trauma, the immigrant experience and life as a person of color in the U.S. Elsa is a sometimes frustrating, wholly human heroine, her quest impeded by emotional baggage and the increasing difficulty of compartmentalization. Her struggle to find answers feels realistically challenging and satisfying. Infused with logic, wonder and healing, Folklorn offers a multifaceted take on family histories. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads