Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

In the early 1900's, Sunja, a young girl from a poor Korean family, is not sure what her life will be.  She lives with her mother in the boardinghouse they run.  Her father, a crippled fisherman who loved her dearly, has passed on.  She expects her life to be spent on the island where she was born, working in the boardinghouse.  A chance encounter in the marketplace leads her to a relationship with Hansu.  Hansu is a tall, rich Korean who lives in Japan where he can pass as Japanese.  The two start a relationship and it is only when Sunja finds herself pregnant that she discovers that Hansu is married with three daughters in Japan.

This is a disaster to her family.   She has brought shame on them all and there is now no hope of marriage as no other man will look at her.  Then a miracle happens.  The two women have been taking care of a sick young man at their boardinghouse.  He is a minister who became ill on his trip to join his brother in Japan as a missionary.  Grateful that the two women have nursed him back to health, he offers to marry Sunja and take her with him.  With no other options, she accepts Isak's offer.

Thus begins Sunja's life in Japan.  Her son with Hansu is Noa but Isak considers him as his own son.  Later the two have a second son, Mozasu.  The couple live with Isak's brother and his wife and it takes everyone to carve out a living in Japan, where Koreans are discriminated against and given only the lowliest jobs.  As the years and decades pass, the family goes through many changes with deaths, new loves, marriages, new children, etc.  The constant is poverty and hard work and the bedrock of family and obligation.

Pachinko is a National Book Award finalist as well as a New York Times Notable Book for 2017.  Readers will be immersed in a culture about which they likely know very little.  It also explores the themes of family, obligations, prejudice and love.  Multigenerational sagas are often described as sprawling but this story is tightly plotted and will draw the reader into a world they never imagined before.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.