Frances Park: Blue Rice

Join us for a talk by acclaimed local novelist Frances Park.

By candlelight, an elderly Korean woman relives her years upended by the Korean War, finding love in the rubble, and her acclimation to 1960 America.

Recently widowed Honey, nee Hanhee, is preparing to move out of her Arlington home when the Virginia earthquake of 2011 hits. Subtly, something in her cracks. Four days later, Hurricane Irene strikes, evoking monsoon-swept streets of yore. With the power out, Honey’s life of a half-century ago cinematically comes to light: Her months as an unlikely prostitute at Madam Cho’s; her secret revolt against her dead parents whose love was in question; a mysterious monk’s prediction; her great, sassy Korean friend Kissuni Kim who dreamed of nothing more than ‘love-mak-ing’; her kindly American neighbor Emma Church who would guide her to independence; and, above all, her lingering love for her first husband Joe Lipton, a journalist who brought Honey to America, only to desert her.

Frances Park states that writing Blue Rice was like living a dream from scenes her late mother shared with her, as well as her watercolor-like remembrances of growing up in white America as a small child of war-torn Korean parents.