Miracle Creek: Winner of the 2020 Edgar Award for best first novel

by Angie Kim

'That wonderful, brilliant sort of book you want to shove at people as soon as you've finished so they can experience it for themselves' Erin Morgenstern

A thrilling debut novel for fans of Liane Moriarty and Celeste Ng about how far we'll go to protect our families - and our deepest secrets.

In rural Virginia, Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine - a pressurised oxygen chamber that patients enter for "dives", used as an alternative therapy for conditions including autism and infertility. But when the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two people, a dramatic murder trial upends the Yoos' small community.

Who or what caused the explosion? Was it the mother of one of the patients, who claimed to be sick that day but was smoking down by the creek? Or was it Young and Pak themselves, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? The ensuing trial uncovers unimaginable secrets from that night: trysts in the woods, mysterious notes, child-abuse charges, as well as tense rivalries and alliances among a group of people driven to extraordinary degrees of desperation and sacrifice.

Angie Kim's Miracle Creek is a thoroughly contemporary take on the courtroom drama, drawing on the author's own life as a Korean immigrant, former trial lawyer, and mother of a real-life "submarine" patient. Both a compelling page-turner and an excavation of identity and the desire for connection, Miracle Creek is a brilliant, empathetic debut from an exciting new voice.

• ISBN10: 1529374944
• ISBN13: 9781529374940
• Publish Date: 25 July 2019 (first published 16 April 2019)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 26 July 2023
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Hodder & Stoughton
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[lessthelonely]

4/5 stars

This book took a lot of time to read, and that isn’t to say it was hard to read - at least, not in the sense that I had to force myself to keep reading. Every single time I grabbed this book? I was having a good time. A very entertaining time, in fact. But it’s been hard to find time to read. Or write. Or do anything that isn’t college related.

But I did finish this book, even if I went on Google because curiosity got the best of me and I just wanted to know who the real culprit was - and I’m kind of glad I did this, because the final pages of the book were still just as engrossing even with the huge reveal spoiled. It was still filled with tension and everything I expect from a thriller mystery.

Anyways, Miracle Creek is a book that has been lauded as one of the greatest books of 2019, and it’s been on my radar for quite some time, like a lot of other books. Believe me, if I was a person that reads more than one book at once, I definitely would, but because I’m not, it’s usually really hard to getting around to reading books that I am definitely interested in. But I’m very driven by moods when reading: sometimes I want romance. Sometimes I want something enthralling and twisty to try and figure out all the big reveals before they happen. Sometimes I want smut, pure and simple.

But the truth is, this book delivered on so many fronts and the fact is that it didn’t have to to be as enjoyable as it was... but, somehow, the author did it. You can tell this is a book that was written from experience and not something that was very heavily researched. Heavily researched books tend to ebb a little bit on that I learned this very cool thing and I’m going to explain it with a lot of wonder attached to it. Angie Kim appears to know a lot about most of the things that this book deals with: autism, HBOT, moving to another country. At least, I know she knows a lot about the first two.

What we end up with is a book that you truly can’t put down once it gets down to the wire. I’m going to admit it took me a bit to get into it. And then I read the Goodreads reply by the author herself saying that people tell her it takes a little bit to get into the story. In my case, that was absolutely true. All I needed was for the lawyers to start talking to the judge.

This book has graphic descriptions of incidents that can easily be found triggering, but what triggered me a lot was a lot of perspectives this book manages to get to the core of: on autism, ironically, you get a spectrum of all the possible perspectives of it - positive, negative, mixed? It’s all here. And they always make sense, even when they leave you mad.

At the same time, this book alternates between court scenes (it is labeled as a courtroom drama) and I would say these are the highlight of the book: it’s not that the lawyers are the best characters, but their dialogue is the most interesting. You will be surprised with how easily you can agree with both the accusation and the defense attorneys's points. But then, you have some slower moments with each of the 6 POVs this book has in it. This was the part that was difficult to get into, because it starts slow, but after the first testifying scene? It picks up, and with a lot of moving parts.

It’s a tight, extremely well-written mess, coupled with a lot of detailed and nuanced characterization. And as twists start hitting, each turn starts taking a toll on you, leaving a noticeable mark. There’s a reason why I went on Google to get spoiled: I couldn’t wait to get to the truth, and I knew I wouldn’t have time to read for some days.

Pick this one up. I will definitely get it physically when I can.

[mercurial]

amazing character portrayals, accurate and sensible cultural references

[zooloo1983]

WOW!

There you go that’s my review….what no? You want more? Seriously!

I am at a loss for words and how I have lost count how many times I have written this review and deleted it. I do not think I can do this book any justice. This book is one where I didn’t race through the pages, I took my time with it. Basically, a week to read it! I love courtroom dramas, and this was just riveting reading. Spanned over a few days, you see the case in so much detail. You live the line of questioning and cross-examinations, and the diagrams in the book were brilliant all adding to the finite detail. Whilst you are sitting in the courtroom, you are shown the past, learning what happened days leading up to the explosion. However, not only this, you are living the present day with all the characters while the case is going on and the day to day outside the courtroom. The breath of the detail in this book is mesmerising. Miracle Creek demands and deserves your full attention. There are a lot of voices in this book, so you do need your concentration hat on, but this did not bother me in the slightest. I was hooked and intrigued by everyone, their lives, their stories and how they all became messily entwined in each other’s lives. I knew when I was lacking attention when I kept reading the same paragraph three or four times…epic fail!

Wow, this book. It pushes you to think, what would you do if you had a child deemed as not ‘normal’. Would you push for all the treatments or would you give up? The Miracle Submarine, a safe haven, an oxygen tank, but how would you cope when your child is not improving like others. Is it easier to have a child to improve or to not? Just some of the things you question when reading Miracle Creek.

Elizabeth is standing trial for murdering her son, Henry, when he was receiving treatment for his autism and her friend, Kitt and we relive through the court case the days leading up to both their deaths and what truly happened that fateful night. I really couldn’t see where this was all going to go, I mean did Elizabeth set the fire to the oxygen tanks? Or was she set up? When you initially meet Elizabeth, well I for one didn’t like her. To me, this was her getting her comeuppance, right? But was she? All the stories and destinies are linked to this fateful night. No one knows how to tell the truth and when it does come out, it’s painful to read. I found I was crying by the end; every action and misconstrued conversation has a consequence and some people had to deal with the biggest ones.

A lot of people I think have been put off by this book, because of the number of different voices, but please do try to pick it up. It’s such a moving and emotive story. A Korean family leaving everything behind to help other families, to give hope to them and their children. The camaraderie with these women, the mums, connecting with how they can’t cope with the pressures of having a child deemed as not “normal” because they have a disability. You see the low and raw times and my heart broke for them. These women were heroes and they found strength each day to carry on. It made me sit back and think about how I would be, I know the decisions I would make but life is not always that simple.

I had in my head the outcome of the court case, but I was flummoxed and speechless, I did not see somethings happening and when they did well just WOW. What Kim has done with this book is powerful and moving. It is tough to talk about the detail in the book and the characters without giving any spoilers away, it is blinking tough as there is so much I would discuss with you. However, without spoiling the ending, I cried, I cried because of the loss, the unnecessary loss and the strength of the people to do the right thing. I cried because of the injustice of a couple of the character was unfair in my eyes, the actions had consequences and some consequences were not justifiably dealt with.

This is the first book for me by Angie Kim, and I can say it won’t be the last. My god, I think that Miracle Creek might always sit in the back of my mind. There was so much in this book, I was never bored, and I loved all the minute details. The little shack that the Yoo’s lived in, the Miracle Submarine, even Miracle Creek, I could have been there, I could smell the forest around them, hear the creek, so peaceful before the explosion. It is cleverly constructed, detailed and a beautifully woven story of love, life, family and trust. Every character is flawed, they have all done or said something that when taken out of context made them look guilty, making you question their motives. I am putting this in my list for book contender for sure (this list is out of control) as I was so invested in everyone’s stories and heartbreak.

It is a book that wants you to look past the facade of life, look at what is in front of you and it will make you question, what would you do for the person you love?