I had to take some time away to really process this book. It wasn't easy. Miracle Creek absolutely ripped my heart out. It's a fantastic, utterly thrilling courtroom drama; it's a mystery, perhaps a murder mystery; and alongside these things, it's also a powerful character study that examines immigration, parenthood, grief, disability and caregiving.

The trial and the mystery are the compelling backdrop here, but this book explores so many things that it's hard to know where to begin describing it.

It's now a year since the night that took two lives and injured several others. Elizabeth, the single mother of one of the victims, is on trial for murder. On the night in question, she dropped her son off for his HBOT treatment and purportedly left to drink wine and smoke cigarettes nearby-- the same cigarettes responsible for the blast that killed her son while she was absent.

HBOT was new to me. It's a kind of oxygen treatment said to improve everything from male infertility to autism, and the author has personal experience with it. Elizabeth's son was on the autism spectrum and, as we soon see, the pressure of looking after him was pushing her to the edge. Whether it was enough for her to murder her son, though, is the real question. The more we learn, the less implausible it sounds.

But there are many other characters in this book and they all play an important role. The third person narration moves through each of their perspectives, filling in the night in question, piece by piece. Each person is fleshed-out and flawed. Kim explores them all in depth, creating so many intimate portraits that all come together to form a bigger picture.

The HBOT facility was started by Pak and Young Yoo. As Korean immigrants, they have had to struggle with the dismissal of their business as silly "Eastern medicine", and with being forced apart when Young and their daughter first came to the United States without Pak. I was especially moved by the discussions about language barriers. Pak is a smart and eloquent man in his native language, but he suffers the indignity of appearing unintelligent in his broken, accented English:

"Pak Yoo was a different person in English than in Korean. In a way, he supposed, it was inevitable for immigrants to become child versions of themselves, stripped of their verbal fluency and, with it, a layer of their competence and maturity."


Another interesting discussion was that about the "fetishization" of Asian women. Janine really struggles with her feelings about it. On the one hand, she thinks it is a potential problem, but she also wonders why men who have a preference for blondes do not get accused of having a “fetish”. Why, she wonders, are Asian women portrayed as something perverse?

I think I could write my own book about all the avenues this fascinating book goes down. I haven't even said anything about the in-depth look at parenting and parental sacrifice. But I should stop before this review becomes ridiculously long.

The final way I will summarize Miracle Creek is that it's a book about so many interesting characters who all want the best for their family, but grind themselves into the ground in the process - Elizabeth driven to the edge by parenting an autistic child, Pak the lonely “goose father” who wants the best for his family, Young who worked such long hours that she alienated her daughter, and there are others too.

I found it such a beautiful and sad literary mystery.

This book touches on a lot of hot topic issues, immigrants, the cause and treatment for autism, and the justice system. Ms Kim looks at these topics by introdusing us to a cast of characters that you come to care about. None of them are perfect yet are complex and full of human foibles.

Young and Pak Soo along with their 17 year old daughter came to America from South Korea. They begin a business that provides hyperbaric treatments to persons with various medical complaints. These i dividuals enter a metal container that looks like a submarine and put on helmets into which pure oxygen is introduced. Most of their patients are children with autism or other neurological issues. We learn in the first chaper that there is an explosion and 2 people die.

Kim lets us meet the parents of these children, Matt, the only adult patient and the Soos by telling the story that led up to that explosion through the alternating voices of these people while the trial of the accused is taking place. It is a high wire balancing act and she does a great job of keeping the reader at the edge of their seat.

When all is said and done, we know the who, what and when but it's the human cost that stays with the reader.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this ARC. This in no way impacted the contents of this review

Great Balls of FIRE....
...literally and figuratively...
From the first sentence, the reader is hooked...
I am completely jubilant about this book....
with a fascinating medical exploration of Hyerbaric oxygen therapy - a treatment used for decompression sickness of scuba diving hazards - but is also used to treat a variety of medical conditions, such is the case in this story.
Medical evidence is sufficient in treating autism, Bell’s palsy, infertility, and a long list of other diseases.
Parents brought their children with special needs to the oxygen tank.
Each session (the dives)were an hour long.

Pak Yoo, Korean immigrant,
sent his wife, Young, and their daughter, Mary to live with a host family in Baltimore. Pak wanted his daughter to get an American education.
Young had to work at a run-down supermarket with bulletproof doors ( gangs at night in the area), 7 days a week. Young worked like a slave in exchange for the host family ( the Kangs), paying for Mary’s American education.
In the meantime, it took another 4 years until Pak joined his wife and daughter in the Baltimore.

Pak opened his Hyperbaric oxygen therapy here in the states. His wife, Young and their daughter, Mary were clearly not happy - about their life in America.
I couldn’t blame them.
Their daily lives were compromised severely. Pak made all the final decisions in that family.
I personally wanted to kick him in the balls!

Pak said HBOT was popular with Asian acupuncture clients. The Asian community in Japan and Korea had wellness centers with infrared saunas and HBOT
He had years of experience in Seoul
Pak had been in Acupuncturist for 30 years..
But gave it up in the states for his oxygen wellness therapy.

Pak and Young’s daughter, Mary was frustrated -lonely and - angry for numerous reasons. Her life as a teenager in the states was completely jeopardized due to their parents choices.
Mary questioned why she needed to get an American education when the math classes in Korea were far superior. In fact all of the education was more advance than in the states. So.. I wondered about their argument as to why they came to America myself.

After the explosion -
Mary’s personality flipped from a hot tempered talkative girl to a detached mute facsimile of her daughter”.
Doctors diagnosed Mary with posttraumatic stress disorder PTSD.
She missed taking her SAT classes that day.... and everything about her life went from worse to worse.

“Miracle Submarine”, ( the oxygen chamber is shaped like a submarine), exploded at 8:25pm on August 26th, 2008, starting an uncontrollable fire. Pak, the owner lied big time that night. His wife was victim to her husband’s lie.

6 people were inside the Submarine chamber.
3 people were in the immediate area.
2 died.
4 were severely injured— hospitalized for months, paralyzed limbs amputated.

Outside the treatment center, on the night of the tragic event, protesters gathered: angry - wanting to close down the Submarine oxygen business. Maybe- but doubtful - that one of the prosecutors were the cause of the explosion.
But possible...

I started to think ‘many’ people were to blame - not just one person.
THIS STORY IS GRIPPING ... and got inside my head.
Even though I felt I knew the number 1 culprit-
I kept thinking about the pros and cons of oxygen medical treatments. The medical fiction was equally as interesting to me as the page turning courtroom drama.
A treatment center opened just 2 miles from my house over a year ago.
Expensive as hell!!!
I’ve been curious about the BIG TANK in our neighborhood- but it was this book that ‘really’ piqued my interest.

Something went VERY WONG the night of the explosion in Miracle Creek.
Accident or intentional?
And what’s the miracle?

A year after the explosion
....a terrific courtroom case began.
Elizabeth Ward was charged with arson, battery, attempted murder. Her own son died.

Elizabeth’s defense attorney, Shannon Haug....was stellar during the courtroom trial. She didn’t believe Elizabeth was guilty. Neither did I...
but Elizabeth and everyone had reason to want to explode the treatment center. Everyone was hiding something.
The town “Miracle Creek” could have been “Liars Creek”. A community of liars.

Abraham Patterley the prosecutor...wasn’t a fan of Shannon Haug -and vice versa. (Making the courtroom drama fun for our reading).

Steve Pierson, an arson specialists and witness verified that the fire started outside the chamber....and Elizabeth ‘was’ outside the chamber the night of the explosion.

Elizabeth’s son, Henry, who had autism was one of the victims killed while in the
“Miracle Submarine” chamber. Doesn’t seem quite like a miracle when people are killed and injured.
But did this mother really cause the fire explosion...
that killed her own child?

We got a clear look
at Elizabeth’s daily demands for her son.
Elizabeth was “Henry-centric”. No time left over for friends and socializing.
“During the day, Elizabeth drove Henry to seven types of therapy—speech, occupational, physical, auditory processing (Tomatis), social skills (RDI), vision processing, neurofeedback—and, between those, roamed holistic/organic stores for
peanut/gluten/casein/dairy/fish/egg-free foods. At night she prepared Henry’s foods and supplements and went on autism treatment boards such as HBOTkids and AutismDoctorMoms”.

Sounds like a committed mother - yet Elizabeth was THE ACCUSED.
Or?? who else was to blame?

The two dead victims were Kim Kozlowski ( the defendant’s long time friend), and Henry Ward, the defendant’s own 8 year old son.

I was totally intrigued with this book! I liked everything about it...
...the medical issues
...the top notch courtroom drama,
and...
...the immigration story - (from Korea to the United States).

4 trial days..
We hear from a full cast of witnesses:
....Matt Thompson was the first witness. A medical doctor - Caucasian - married to Janine Cho - Asian -( also a medical doctor/ internist).
Matt has fingers amputated from being in the chamber during the fire that night in August 2008.
Others witnesses:
PakYoo, owner of HBOT
Young Yoo ( wife of Pak)
Elizabeth Ward, ( the accused) ... and once married to Victor
Janine Cho, ( Matt’s wife)
Teresa ... mother of Rosa, a teen daughter with cerebral palsy, due to an illness.

Author Angie Kim did an outstanding job with this novel. As a preteen she moved from Seoul, Korea to the suburbs of Baltimore.
She attended University and Harvard Law school.

This was a phenomenal enjoyable debut novel.
The cast is large - but was very easy for me to keep track of everyone.

This was the BEST courtroom drama I’ve read since “Defending Jacob”...by William Landry.
Plus this novel had added enrichment topic: medical fiction and immigration.

Smokin-hot-storytelling!!!

One of my FAVORITES!!!

Thank you Farrar, Straus, Giroux, Netgalley, and Angie Kim

I received an electronic ARC through NetGalley.

Unfortunately, this book was not my cup of tea. I appreciate the fact that the author covered a very controversial topic, and researched it well. However, it just did not sit right with me. It was also difficult for me to keep trac of the characters; especially the moms and their children.

When I thought "I'll be able to put this book down," I was lying to myself. It had me hooked. And who I was sure had done it, had not done it! And as interested as I was in the mystery, I was in it for the lives of the families, how thoughtfully and heartbreakingly they'd been portrayed.

I received this from Netgalley.com in exchange for a review.

When the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two people, a dramatic murder trial upends the Yoos’ small community.

Good courtroom drama, the back and forth questions/answers were intriguing and interesting. And we are given some insight into the problems an immigrant can face. But, I did get tired of each character prattering on as the back story was told. Everyone lied and I never really understood why.

3☆

What an interesting concept, I just didn't care for the characterization. The passion of people on both sides of the HBOC issue is deeply rooted because it's essentially life or death. While having more than one narrator is fine for most, it's just not my cup of tea.

Court room drama with multiple points of views on the case, the relationships among these people and the tragic deaths.
Lies, miscommunication and vagueness from each individual led to strange causal consequences that led to the death of two people.

It was a steady build of tension, human error and arrogance and the at the centre was the problem of silence.

Those little things we hide about ourselves and lie about and how that can build, roll into a mass of hurt, pain and regret.

A solid first novel from Angie Kim.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

This is part courtroom drama, part reflection on emigrating from Korea to the US, and partly a description of what it is like to be constantly trying to improve your autistic child's quality of life. It is told from different viewpoints in the present as the trial is occurring, but with each character also reflecting back on the day of a terrible tragedy.

This was a good read (I particularly enjoyed the scene towards the beginning where Matt is forced to agree to HBOT treatment at a a dinner party at his in-laws' house), although in general I found Matt's voice the least convincing. I found the story starting to drag a little for the last third - I just wanted to get to the bottom of things. Very thought-provoking on the subjects of blame, responsibility, and consequences.

I was really blown away by this book. Initially I was drawn in the hyperbaric oxygen therapy angle of the story and then became completely wrapped up in Angie Kim's beautiful, heartbreaking writing. This is a story about the love of parents for their children and also a legal thriller with some great courtroom tension. I highly recommend it and I hope to read more of this author's work in the future.

I don’t really read courtroom dramas (with the exception of The Bonfire of the Vanities being one of my all time favorite books), but I really enjoyed Miracle Creek by Angie Kim. This engaging slow-burn of a novel about a Korean immigrant family and those in their orbit twists around to point the finger at a different character with every chapter, convincingly making the case that just about everyone involved with the hyperbaric chamber in Miracle Creek, VA - and its deadly explosion - at best has something to hide, and at worst, could be responsible. Along with questioning the implications of withholding information to protect oneself or someone else, Miracle Creek really made me wonder about the American trial system, and how often the omission of details casts blame (or doubt) in the wrong direction.

Thanks Netgalley and Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux for the galley. All opinions mine!

Posted 3/6/19 on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2720285995

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I really loved this book. Very different and I enjoyed the back and forth between the court case, the characters, and back story. The writing was excellent and lead you to feeling the emotions of the characters and circumstances.

Wow- what an incredible debut novel from Angie Kim. A heart-wrenching, beautiful, tragic story told from the perspectives of multiple characters, I loved this book from the very first chapter. Kim does a perfect job of setting the story up through a courtroom drama, leaving the reader to try to piece together how and why an oxygen chamber was set on fire, killing and injuring several people, but she also expertly develops each major character in incredibly poignant and insightful ways. I highly recommend Miracle Creek - the rare book that keeps a mystery going while also offering the reader a deep insight into the humanity and flaws of everyday people.

A unique combination of gripping court-room drama and literary fiction. Plenty of twists and turns and family drama, and at the heart of it is a family immigration story.

I was very intrigued by the original title of this novel and I couldn’t wait to dive in (pun 100% intended). This courtroom drama type novel is not my typical read but I could not put it down.

I work for a court so I was thrilled to read a book about a court case. Miracle Creek is a fast paced, mysterious, multi-perspective read. I was also thrilled to know that autism was a big topic in this book - something society could stand to learn more about. I loved the tidbits of information that the story would share one piece at a time. I was surprised by the outcome and do not want to say too much more. This is a must read!!

Fans of a good courtroom drama will not be disappointed by Miracle Creek. It also includes a great mystery and leaves you questioning both sides of the trial the entire time. A page turner that you will read in 1-2 sittings, Miracle Creek is not one to be missed.

Courtroom dramas are a bit of a weakness of mine whether it be on television or in books. This was a court drama but it was more than that: it's the story of multiple people dealing with tragedy, guilt, fear, and lies. Who is lying and who is really responsible for the death of two patients? You'll just have to try and figure that question out for yourself.

I loved that we were immediately pulled into the story. The first couple of pages I was a little confused but it all quickly made sense. The reader is thrown into The Night of a horrible accident (or calculated murder) before the story jumps ahead a year later to the trial.

I could not seem to put this book down. I needed to figure it out and put the evidence together to decide whether or not the woman on trial for murder was innocent or guilty (and if she wasn't the culprit who was) but with each POV change (which was excellently done I might add) I found my suspect list growing. On the note, with POV change, I get a little nervous when authors do this. I've had too many books where the "voices" of the characters blur together and I can't remember who I'm even reading. Angie Kim does a fantastic job of giving each character their own "voice" - I never once had to flip back to the beginning of the chapter to figure out who I was supposed to be reading.

There are no perfect characters in this story. It's not black and white by any means. These characters, their thoughts, and feelings, are not all good nor are they horrible monsters. They all have split-second thoughts they instantly regret; they feel envy and give in to moments of cruelty just for the sake of making themselves feel better for just a single moment. It's ugly but it's real and I felt it made the characters seem really fleshed out.

The ending is not simple. It's painful even while being uplifting. All in all, I really enjoyed this story from start to finish.

“...we all have our moments. But they’re just moments, and they pass.”

Miracle Creek is a story about those moments...the myriad forms they take, the time they take until they pass—if they ever pass—and mostly, it’s about the people who live in those moments. Miracle Creek is a human story. Each character lovingly written to be complex and flawed...to be human. Miracle Creek is about prejudice and rivalry and lust and love and pride (blinding pride that has the power to warp moments into something that lasts so much longer). Miracle Creek is about lies—some big, others small—that shape moments into barbed things. Miracle Creek is about consequence and grief and here, that’s the most human moment of them all.

Told as an unfolding courtroom drama (one of the better I’ve read) through multiple points of view, Miracle Creek doesn’t give up its secrets easily. Readers will work for them and enjoy doing so.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for this fantastic ARC provided in exchange for honest review.

3.75 ⭐

Brilliant debut novel about a mother accused of killing her autistic son. This story was full of secrets & little reveals that kept me engaged from the start.
This wasn't just your typical courtroom drama; it explored in details the immigrant experience (the hard work, the sacrifices), Korean culture & what living with a disabled child is like.