An electrifying debut novel for fans of Celeste Ng and Jean Kwok, The Last Story of Mina Lee is a poignant mother-daughter story and surprising mystery that illustrates the devastating realities of being an immigrant in America.
Margot Lee’s mother, Mina, isn’t returning her calls. It’s a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown and finds that her mother has died under suspicious circumstances. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the tenuous invisible strings that held together her single mother’s life as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother.
Interwoven with Margot’s present-day search is Mina’s story of her first years in Los Angeles as she navigates the promises and perils of the American myth of reinvention. Barely earning a living by stocking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing Mina ever expects is to fall in love. But that love story sets in motion a string of events that have consequences for years to come, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death.
Told through the intimate lens of a mother and daughter who have struggled all their lives to understand each other, The Last Story of Mina Lee is both a gripping page-turner and a profound family saga that explores identity, secrets, and what it truly means to belong.
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“Nancy Jooyoun Kim writes with brilliant exactitude about the anxious topographies of being a mother and a daughter, and the choices that lead to migration. The Last Story of Mina Lee is a confident and gripping account of where families bury secrets and what happens when you dig.”
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Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of The Fruit of the Drunken Tree