“I’m really excited,” she says in a call to her home in Great Falls, Virginia. “It’s a good excuse to have a big party.” And no doubt it will be a fun one, as the author radiates energy and enthusiasm even over the phone.
At the center of her book is the Yoo family (Young; her husband, Pak; and their 17-year-old daughter, Mary), who have emigrated from Korea and landed in the rural town of Miracle Creek, Virginia. In a barn, they run Miracle Submarine, a center for hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) where people go on “dives” in the pressurized oxygen chamber as an experimental treatment for a variety of conditions, including autism, cerebral palsy, infertility and more. Disaster strikes in the very first chapter when the Yoos’ chamber explodes, killing two people and injuring and disfiguring others.
The accident, it turns out, is the result of arson, and the rest of the novel unfolds during four days of a trial held one year later, told from multiple points of view, weaving past and present together in a tangled yet beautifully constructed whodunit web.”