Inheritance

Jane Park

A young woman returns to the prairies, where she revisits her immigrant childhood and confronts a haunting guilt.

Anne Kim is a lawyer in New York, her success built on forgetting the past. When her father dies, she returns to Edmonton for the funeral and is shocked to discover he was from North Korea and left his brother behind.

As she reads the undelivered letters her father wrote to his brother about life in Canada, she is transported back to her childhood in the 1980s and 90s. She recalls the struggles her parents faced as immigrants who ran a grocery store in a rural prairie town. Anne and her brother, Charles, felt the weight of their father’s expectations: Anne was driven to excel and overachieve, whereas Charles rebelled, determined to pursue his own dreams. His rebellion created a rift that culminated in a devastating act, irrevocably shattering their family and leaving Anne overwhelmed by an inescapable guilt.

Inheritance explores the immigrant experience, the sacrifices made by both parents and children, and how trauma transfers to the next generation. As Anne journeys to the past, she emerges to finally define life on her own terms, and her story will resonate long after the final page.

Jane Park is an MFA student at the University of British Columbia. She is a MacDowell Fellow and participated in programs at the 92 Street Y, Banff Centre, the Humber School for Writers, and the Asian American Writer’s Workshop. After more than a decade in New York City, she now lives in Calgary, Alberta. This is her debut novel.

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