Excerpt from The Kinship of Secrets by Eugenia Kim, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

“Don’t disturb her. You go back to sleep, and I’ll wake you if we decide to go. And if we do, it’s only for a short while.”

“Okay.” She returned to her room. Uncle was lax with discipline, but Inja had grown dutiful under the rough watch of her strict aunt and a stern command or two from her grandparents. Back in bed, with the pulse of Grandmother’s breath in her ear, she lay wide awake and listened to unintelligible talk between the men, and soon a rising volume of complaints from Aunt. With such fights frequent in their house, Inja had learned to muffle the bitter tones and ugly words by diverting her attention to making lists, sometimes of what came in the last package from America, what clothes had been distributed, what candy had been devoured, what new words she’d learned from reading newspapers with Uncle, or the quirky things Yun - her nanny, who was Cook’s thirteen-year-old daughter—did that made her laugh. She created an imaginary list of what she would pack.

Bible picture book from Mother, my favorite of everything

Blue KEDS sneakers from Mother (I copied those letters from the blue rubber label at the heel)

Socks and clothes

She ran her hand over the pressed linen surface of her Bible storybook, always nearby, and fingered its borders tooled with gold swashes. As high and wide as her chest and as thick as three fingers, it required both arms to carry it. If she took the book, little else would fit into a small bundle for their journey, so she sat against the wall and thought about all the things from the American packages she’d have to leave behind, all gifts from her mother and father and sister. These items lay on a corner shelf nearby, and as the room grayed with dawn, their silhouettes made it easier for her to inventory.

Pink rubber ball

Small doll with yellow hair and moving arms and legs

American flag on a chopstick-sized stick

A miniature spoon with words etched in its bowl

Bamboo flute

Shiny wrappers from candy and gum

A brooch made of pompoms, shaped like a poodle (a strange American dog)

Card of hairpins with a picture of a pretty girl with brown curls

Coloring book, all done, and six crayons (Yun was better at staying inside the lines)

Woolen scarf with mittens knitted onto the ends (no one liked it because it was red)

Cross-legged on the floor, she opened the Bible book to feel the glossy leaves of its illustrations. It was too dark to see, but she’d studied them for so many hours, she could guess what image was beneath her fingers by the bulk of pages in each hand. They were vivid and unforgettable, and from memorizing what her uncle said about the captions, she had learned what Fear looked like, and Greed, Sin, Pride, and Envy. It did not have a picture of Communist Invasion, but she thought their forthcoming journey might mirror how the Chosen People had crossed the sea floor while God held the raging waters back.

Inja leaned against the wall and fell asleep to sounds of activity in the kitchen and in an outside shed, where an oxcart had been stored since the war with Japan before she was born.

Excerpted from The Kinship of Secrets by Eugenia Kim. Copyright © 2018 by Eugenia Kim. Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.