Excerpt from The Sisters K by Maureen Sun, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Part I

The Daughters

The sisters Minah, Sarah, and Esther shared the same father but were not full-blooded siblings. And though they each considered the same woman their mother, they were not raised by the same women. 

No one could or would tell Minah, the eldest, much about the woman who gave birth to her and, as their father claimed, abandoned her to return to Korea when she was one or two—the facts were never clear. He said that after her mother abandoned her he had no choice but to send Minah back to Korea to be with his brother's family. Minah couldn't remember them, only the day of her return to Los Angeles. She disembarked clutching at a flight attendant on a day in high summer and met Jeonghee, her new stepmother. Above and beyond them curved and stretched the vast glass corridors of LAX, where the infrastructure seemed to be protecting everyone from the heavens crushing them on all sides. 

"There she is," Eugene indicated indifferently, already turning to leave the terminal. Jeonghee took Minah's hand. At Jeonghee's side, Minah could see only her stepmother's belly, which was protruding with child. 

Jeonghee was happy to find that her stepdaughter, contrary to reports from Eugene and her brother-in-law, was attentive and affectionate. She was lonely in America, in her small minimally furnished house, in a suburb she could not locate on a map, knowing only that it was an hour outside LA. At first she'd been impressed by her freshly painted new home, one of a row of cottage-like houses with front yards presenting trimmed bushes and pruned trees. It soon became a place of confinement. She knew no one apart from her husband, who was away all day, and was afraid to venture outside alone. Minah became her solace and only friend. 

Minah, just learning to speak in complex sentences, never left her new mother's side. "Let's have breakfast," Jeonghee said every morning. "You spilled cereal on the floor." "Let's have lunch." "Let's watch TV." "You can have a snack." "You can play in the backyard while I cook." But Minah didn't want to leave her, so Jeonghee continued to talk. "I'm going to make rice porridge for us. You have to cook the rice for a long, long time. Do you want something else?"

"Let's have a rest," she said often, because her calves were swollen and her back ached.

She began to talk about herself. "I'm going to wash my hair today. I need to learn to drive. Your father said he'd teach me. After I learn I can take us to the hair salon. I don't feel right with my hair like this. I feel like I can't leave the house. We can both get our hair done at the salon. 

That would be exciting, wouldn't it?" "Yes, yes!" Minah exclaimed.

At the table, between bites, Jeonghee said quietly, "Strawberries dipped in sugar might be my favorite thing. We can have them all the time, if we want, did you know that? You can always find strawberries here even if they're not in season. We should be happy about that. We should always think of good things." 

Minah chewed and nodded. She was happy with Jeonghee. For a few minutes they ate in silence.

Jeonghee said dreamily, "I wonder what your mother was like." 

Minah stopped chewing. "My mother?" 

She'd believed a mother was a person to acquire and that she did, at last, possess a very good one.

"Let's finish the strawberries," Jeonghee said quickly. "Your father's going to bring some melons tonight. He doesn't like strawberries, so they're just for us."

Jeonghee didn't talk to Minah around her husband. When Eugene was home she treated Minah coolly, like a nuisance, and waited on him. Minah, far from being displeased, felt she had a secret relationship with Jeonghee. Eugene managed his dry-cleaning business from early morning to early evening and sometimes didn't return home until late at night. Her bond with Jeonghee made the true, secret life of the household, which her father merely visited, where she and Jeonghee existed in their love. 

Excerpted from The Sisters K by Maureen Sun. Copyright © 2024 by Maureen Sun. Excerpted by permission of The Unnamed Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.