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The Last Story of Mina Lee by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

Contemporary fiction

The Last Story of Mina Lee

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Nancy Jooyoun Kim, on your first book!

by Nancy Jooyoun Kim

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Quick take

A story to fill the generational gap between mothers and daughters, sprinkled with mystery, self-discovery, and love.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Inspirational

    Inspirational

  • Illustrated icon, Slow_Build

    Slow build

  • Illustrated icon, Nonlinear_Timeline

    Nonlinear timeline

  • Illustrated icon, Mama_Drama

    Mama drama

Synopsis

Margot Lee's mother, Mina, isn't returning her calls. It's a mystery to twenty-six-year-old Margot, until she visits her childhood apartment in Koreatown, LA, and finds that her mother has suspiciously died. The discovery sends Margot digging through the past, unraveling the tenuous invisible strings that held together her single mother's life as a Korean War orphan and an undocumented immigrant, only to realize how little she truly knew about her mother.

Interwoven with Margot's present-day search is Mina's story of her first year in Los Angeles as she navigates the promises and perils of the American myth of reinvention. While she's barely earning a living by stocking shelves at a Korean grocery store, the last thing Mina ever expects is to fall in love. But that love story sets in motion a series of events that have consequences for years to come, leading up to the truth of what happened the night of her death.

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Get an early look from the first pages of The Last Story of Mina Lee.

The Last Story of Mina Lee

Margot

Fall 2014

Margot's final conversation with her mother had seemed so uneventful, so ordinary—another choppy bilingual plod. Half-understandable.

Business was slow again today. Even all the Korean businesses downtown are closing.

What did you eat for dinner?

Everyone is going to Target now, the big stores. It costs the same and it’s cleaner.

Margot imagined her brain like a fishing net with the loosest of weaves as she watched the Korean words swim through. She had tried to tighten the net before, but learning another language, especially her mother’s tongue, frustrated her. Why didn’t her mother learn to speak English?

But that last conversation was two weeks ago. And for the past few days, Margot had only one question on her mind: Why didn’t her mother pick up the phone?

 

Since Margot and Miguel had left Portland, the rain had been relentless and wild. Through the windshield wipers and fogged glass, they only caught glimpses of fast food and gas, motels and billboards, premium outlets and “family fun centers.” Margot gripped the wheel, hands cramping, damp with fear. The rain had started an hour ago, right after they had made a pit stop in north Portland to see the famous thirty-one-foot-tall Paul Bunyan sculpture with his cartoonish smile, red-and-white checkered shirt on his barrel chest, his hands resting on top of an upright ax.

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Why I love it

As a daughter of immigrants, I am drawn to stories that paint a picture of what it means to be American from a perspective that is often untold. The Last Story of Mina Lee does just that, grappling beautifully with themes of identity, class, race, gender, and what it truly means to belong. I finished the novel in one sitting (and may or may not have wept through some of it). It’s one of those stories that grabs you from the first line and stays with you long after you turned the last page.

It starts with a gripping discovery: Margot Lee returns to her childhood apartment in Koreatown, Los Angeles, to find that her mother Mina has mysteriously died. On a quest to learn the truth about her mother’s death, Margot digs into Mina’s past as an orphan of the Korean War and an undocumented immigrant. Gradually, she learns that the woman she called mom contained multitudes.

A vivid examination of immigration and belonging, this moving debut tells two stories in parallel—Margot’s present-day discovery of her dead mother in 2014 and Mina Lee’s arrival to the United States in 1987. An emotional mother-daughter story wrapped up in a poignant mystery, this book is an unforgettable reading experience.

Member ratings (12,073)

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Debut authors
View all
This Time Next Year
All We Were Promised
Shark Heart
Lessons in Chemistry
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
How to End a Love Story
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
The Stone Witch of Florence
A Flicker in the Dark
Honey
A Thousand Times Before
Ariadne
The Wishing Game
The Collected Regrets of Clover
The Days I Loved You Most
The Road of Bones
Thistlefoot
Dinner for Vampires
The Wives
Adelaide
Here After
Spitting Gold
The Ministry of Time
Did I Ever Tell You?
Middletide
The Teller of Small Fortunes
Northwoods
This Spells Love
A Short Walk Through a Wide World
The Storm We Made
Dirty Diana
Neighbors and Other Stories
The Husbands
More
You, Again
The Love Hypothesis
Red, White & Royal Blue
The Other Valley
Hard by a Great Forest
Maame
The Circus Train
The Mayor of Maxwell Street
The Other Black Girl
Weyward
The Push
Age of Vice
The Lost Apothecary
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
Paper Names
We Are the Brennans
Black Cake
The Last Russian Doll
Olga Dies Dreaming
She Started It
Bringing Down the Duke
Somebody's Daughter
The Hacienda
Beautiful Country
Dearest
Lunar Love
Kaikeyi
River Sing Me Home
Love & Other Disasters
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Sign Here
The Stranger Upstairs
Damnation Spring
The Maid
The Verifiers
A Little Hope
In Every Mirror She's Black
Taste Makers
Fiona and Jane
Yinka, Where Is Your Huzband?
Camp Zero
The Last Story of Mina Lee
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
My Body
Honey Girl
Vladimir
Big Friendship
Black Buck
White Ivy
Three Women
White Horse
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Marlena
Sharp Objects
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Small Country
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All That You Leave Behind
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Leaving the Witness
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The Stars and the Blackness Between Them
The Water Dancer
Full Disclosure
When the Stars Lead to You
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The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
A Burning
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