Nuclear Family

by Joseph Han

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Things are looking up for Mr. and Mrs. Cho. Their dream of franchising their Korean plate lunch restaurants across Hawai'i seems within reach after a visit from Guy Fieri boosts the profile of Cho's Delicatessen. Their daughter, Grace, is busy finishing her senior year of college, while her older brother, Jacob, just moved to Seoul to teach English. But when a viral video shows Jacob trying—and failing—to cross the Korean demilitarized zone, nothing can protect the family from suspicion and the restaurant from waning sales.



No one knows that Jacob has been possessed by the ghost of his lost grandfather, who feverishly wishes to cross the divide and find the family he left behind in the north. As Jacob is detained by the South Korean government, Mr. and Mrs. Cho fear their son won't ever be able to return home, and Grace gets more and more stoned as she negotiates her family's undoing. Struggling with what they don't know about themselves and one another, the Chos must confront the separations that have endured in their family for decades.



Set in the months leading up to the 2018 false missile alert in Hawai'i, Joseph Han's profoundly funny and strikingly beautiful debut novel is an offering that aches with histories inherited and reunions missed, asking how we heal in the face of what we forget and who we remember.

Release date: June 7, 2022

Publisher: Counterpoint

Print pages: 320

Sample

Tae-woo

Tae-woo stood on the ledge behind the Dora Observatory’s row of binoculars. No one paid him any mind since he was long dead. Tae-woo had become an outline, his body opaque and waning as his spirit would with time. Until he could find a living relative, Tae-woo could only get this far. A white tourist standing right under him, using the pair of binoculars between Tae-woo’s legs, squealed when he found the propaganda village. Tae-woo swung his foot through the tourist’s head. He hated the people who visited the DMZ. Folks from all around the world who got a cheap thrill from the proximity to North Korea. Tae-woo was close too. No matter how many times he tried, Tae-woo could never breach the DMZ.

When he died, Tae-woo woke up outside of his body, panting and clutching his heart after having fallen through the chair in his booth. In the final years of his life, he worked as a parking lot attendant for a nearby megachurch where people paid weekly for their tickets into heaven, a fare to leave the garage. Tae-woo’s body slumped over the controls for the gate arm. A driver nearest the booth screamed at Tae-woo, believing he had fallen asleep, while drivers farther back honked at the holdup. Dying was painful, if only for a moment. He tried to slip back into his body by molding his new form into its former. He swatted at his head—his hand passed through. He would have preferred nothing to this.

Tae-woo exited the booth and walked through the gate arm, figuring this meant he could walk back home to the north, which, upon first arriving to the DMZ, proved false.

 

At the border, his face smacked right into an invisible wall.

 

In a second attempt, he generated some momentum from a farenough distance, believing he could run right through.

A force repelled him upon impact, in a burst which sent him flying farther back each time he tried to run faster. The wall bombarded Tae-woo, as if waiting to detonate upon his every charge, as if powered by the million slumbering land mines scattered around both sides of the DMZ and the many bombs dropped and unexploded, waiting to be found.

He pounded on the wall and sobbed, the wall invisible until they came into contact. It vibrated with each thwack, an electric ripple searing the wall and Tae-woo both—its lasting burn reverberated through him, the wall remaining hot from the controlled fires devouring underbrush that would have obstructed both sides from locating any potential threat.

Not knowing the wall itself was most well-fed—would cause the greatest harm.