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The Liberators
I found a tool, an ink brush, a twig, or my stub finger and used it to draw a character on parchment, dirt, or air. When one line touched another, my heart reached my fingertips to impart meaning. On a tree, I carved ‘tree’; in the river, I spelled in pebbles ‘river’; on my mother’s dress, I inked ‘dress.’ At some point, my mother set me down and didn’t pick me up again. On my mother’s grave, I wrote ‘grave.’
What does the next generation carry with them from the past, and what do they hope to find in an uncertain future?
At the height of the military dictatorship in South Korea, Insuk and Sungho are arranged to be married. The couple soon moves to San Jose, California, with an infant and Sungho’s overbearing mother-in-law. Adrift in a new country, Insuk grieves the loss of her past and her divided homeland, finding herself drawn into an illicit relationship that sets into motion a dramatic saga and echoes for generations to come.
From the Gwangju Massacre to the 1988 Olympics, flashbacks to Korean repatriation after Japanese surrender, and the Sewol Ferry accident, E. J. Koh’s exquisitely drawn portraits and symphonic testimony from guards, prisoners, perpetrators, and liberators spans continents and four generations of two Korean families forever changed by fateful past decisions made in love and war. Extraordinarily beautiful and deeply moving, The Liberators is an elegantly wrought family saga of memory, trauma, and empathy, and a stunning testament to the consequences and fortunes of inheritance.
Praise
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E.J. Koh always operates with a kind of alchemy; what she touches turns to gold.
—Lit Hub
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