By 
Crystal Hana Kim, the Author, the Author of “The Stone Home” has written a powerful, heart-breaking, memorable and intense novel. The Genres for this Novel are Historical Fiction, Coming of Age, and Adult Fiction. This is a complicated and difficult book to read. The timelines for this story are set in 1981 in South Korea, and 2011. The author vividly describes her characters, and the atrocities and abuse that occurred. In the early 1980’s, before the Olympics, the South Korean Government wanted all vagrants, beggars, and other people sent to detention centers to rehabilitate them to be returned to society. What happened instead makes for a nightmare hidden in history. The detention centers were similar to Concentration Camps, but referred to as state-sanctioned reformatories.
Families were often ripped apart, and the children were beaten, physically and psychologically abused. Originally the vagrants were only to be there a year, but many disappeared or died. In this novel, the author discusses the relationship of a mother and daughter, that tried to have hope, and two brothers, who were forced to make difficult choices.
The author does mention how some of the prisoners were kind and showed hope to one another. This is an important book that does shed light on the darkness of a violent and powerful hidden time and agenda. I would recommend this book to shed light on a devastating time.
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