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Summary and Reviews of Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

Miracle Creek

by Angie Kim
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (7):
  • Readers' Rating (11):
  • First Published:
  • Apr 16, 2019, 368 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Apr 2020, 368 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

A thrilling debut novel for fans of Liane Moriarty and Celeste Ng about how far we'll go to protect our families - and our deepest secrets.

My husband asked me to lie. Not a big lie. He probably didn't even consider it a lie, and neither did I, at first ...

In rural Virginia, Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine - a pressurized oxygen chamber that patients enter for therapeutic "dives" with the hopes of curing issues like autism or infertility. But when the Miracle Submarine mysteriously explodes, killing two people, a dramatic murder trial upends the Yoos' small community.

Who or what caused the explosion? Was it the mother of one of the patients, who claimed to be sick that day but was smoking down by the creek? Or was it Young and Pak themselves, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? The ensuing trial uncovers unimaginable secrets from that night - trysts in the woods, mysterious notes, child-abuse charges - as well as tense rivalries and alliances among a group of people driven to extraordinary degrees of desperation and sacrifice.

Angie Kim's Miracle Creek is a thoroughly contemporary take on the courtroom drama, drawing on the author's own life as a Korean immigrant, former trial lawyer, and mother of a real-life "submarine" patient. Both a compelling page-turner and an excavation of identity and the desire for connection, Miracle Creek is a brilliant, empathetic debut from an exciting new voice.

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    Edgar Awards
    2020

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

...Miracle Creek ultimately puts trust in readers to come to their own conclusions concerning hard questions—about racism, sexism, ableism, and justice. By showing us how little the truth may matter in a legal setting, Kim creates the eerie feeling that it's up to us to make our own decisions about the guilt or innocence of her characters, and that's no easy task. This is a book that demands an audience willing to approach it with care, and it deserves to find that audience...continued

Full Review (724 words)

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(Reviewed by Elisabeth Cook).

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Beyond the Book



HBOT: Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

HBOT MultichamberHBOT (hyperbaric oxygen therapy), the medical treatment at the center of Miracle Creek, is a real treatment used for a variety of conditions. While undergoing HBOT, you breathe pure oxygen in an environment where the air pressure is much higher than normal. The higher pressure allows you to take in more oxygen, which can help your body heal faster from injuries, infections, and other conditions.

Records suggest that it was a British physician who first applied hyperbaric therapy in 1662. French physician Paul Bert later researched the science behind hyperbaric therapy and, in 1878, published his findings in a book he wrote, entitled La Pression Barométrique. In recent years, medical professionals all over the world have used ...

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Read-Alikes

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