A lyrical novel following a Korean immigrant pursuing the American dream who must confront the secrets of the past or risk watching the world he’s worked so hard to build come crumbling down.
Brutalized by cultural genocide, first by the Japanese empire and then by American napalm, Yungman comes from a small village that finds itself on the northern side of an American-drawn line...In the Air Force base where he becomes a “houseboy,” he is given the nickname Hong Kil-dong, the Korean Robin Hood, a curiously rakish nickname for someone so quiet, precise, observant...He only later realizes it is merely a place-holder, the equivalent of John Doe, for all men on official Korean documents...Lee, a fiction professor and founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, has written a novel about the quiet humanity of sacrifice...Yungman owes his life in America to many: his communist-leaning mother, who damns herself to save her two sons; his gangster brother, who pays Yungman’s way through medical school; his wife, Young-ae, who was cleverer than he was in medical school but hasn’t practiced since her unplanned pregnancy...From the outside, Yungman and Young-ae — parents to a 'Korean-ish' adult son, Einstein — seem to be 'so intensely connected that their communication had taken on a form beyond spoken language'...This is a novel about healers and healing, about unflashy, quiet heroism, all wrapped in Yungman’s mordant humor...Lee summons well-worn Korean syllogisms — 'the flower that blooms in the morning is dead by noon' — as well as 'the lament of the Korean people, shot through with years of sadness over its history, pessimism for its future,' into lyrical, lush, deeply felt prose...'Diffuse pain was the hardest to pinpoint for a cause,' Yungman says of one of his patients...The same is true of himself and his people.
Marie Myung-Ok Lee's sweeping novel, The Evening Hero, opens with a depiction of an eventful day for Dr. Yungman Kwak, who for decades has delivered the babies or Horse's Breath, a small town on the Iron Range of Minnesota populated by the descendants of Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish immigrants...Yungman is a good man, but perhaps has never lived up to his bold Korean name —'Evening Hero'...With comic flair, Lee follows her endearing, 5-foot-4 protagonist—who economizes by purchasing decommissioned police cars at the sheriff's auction and who is so empathetic 'he often became crampy himself when it was time to push'—as he embarks on a late-in-life awakening about his purpose and the secrets he carries from the Korean War...Lee illustrates how the turmoil of war occasions desperate choices as each person struggles to stay alive, and how those who survive forever endure guilt about their decisions...The Evening Hero is a book about one man's steadfast devotion to his job, family and community, even when his dedication is unrequited...With heart, humor and authentic detail, Lee shows how the most outwardly unassuming people can harbor epic histories.
Toggling between the past and present, Korea and America, The Evening Hero is a sweeping, moving, darkly comic novel about a man looking back at his life and asking big questions about what is lost and what is gained when immigrants leave home for new shores.
