Song For Another Home by Bora Lee Reed is a dual POV novel taking place just after the Americans and Chinese enter the Korean War. Oksoon, her mother, and brother are forced to flee Pyeongyang due to unrest. They journey on foot south to Seoul to find Oksoon’s father and other brother. The other POV follows Junho, Oksoon’s cousin, who has found refuge at an orphanage in Jinju. Junho is allowed to stay by saying he is younger than he is, but also due to his aptitude for the English language. He becomes the orphanage director’s letter writer, notably carrying on a correspondence with an American woman.
For the first half of the book, I felt most engaged by Oksoon’s story. Her family’s journey to the south has some harrowing and heart-wrenching action, but it’s when they reach Seoul that her story seems to hit its stride. Oksoon and her family connect with a colorful cast of characters (from comfort women to boatmen to gamblers) in the city, eventually going on to work in a hole in the wall restaurant called “The Soup House.” The gritty life they live here with their burgeoning found family, despite never finding the family patriarch and other brother, was interesting and engaging. I would’ve loved a whole book from Oksoon’s POV in Seoul with her colorful found family and their trials and tribulations. However, her family’s time in Seoul is short lived before Oksoon’s brother makes a mistake that nearly costs them their new found safety.
Junho is at the orphanage for the entirety of the novel as he develops friendships with the children there, as well as a fixation on the director’s newly arrived niece, Ms. Kim. Junho seems to fall fast for her despite them barely knowing her. He seems to be in love with the idealized version of her, but his rose tinted glasses are blown off by a startling revelation about Ms. Kim. Most of Junho’s chapters were filled with his own musings without much action or world building concerning the war.
Unfortunately, I felt the second half of the book fell off. I know it sounds strange to say, but I felt like not a lot actually happens in terms of action or the plot being propelled further after Oksoon and her family are forced out of Seoul. Junho seems to be the only one who has any sort of inner character development despite his stationary nature, whereas everyone else largely stays the same. There was just something missing in this book overall that I couldn’t quite put my finger on–perhaps there was not enough character depth or action for me to feel as if the stakes were that high, despite the larger context of the Korean War which we really don’t hear a lot about.
Song For Another Home will be released on July 21, 2026
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