Eventually, Yungman enlists in Doctors Without Borders, an endeavor that brings him back to what is now North Korea, where he was born in 1940. Yungman isn't much of a match for SANUS's startup jargon ('medical professionals are divided into service providers the DRones and the MDieties,' his son, Einstein, explains about their boss's philosophy, which also involves classifying Einstein as a 'Doctorpreneur'). Thirsty for a new purpose to life, Yungman Kwak takes a job with his son's employer, SANUS, a healthcare company with several retail outlets in the Mall of America. Lee (Somebody's Daughter) returns with an ambitious story charting the travails of an elderly immigrant doctor in Minnesota after the hospital he works at closes down. Toggling between the past and the present, Korea and America, Evening Hero is a sweeping, moving, darkly comic novel about a man looking back at his life and asking big questions about what is lost and what is gained when immigrants leave home for new shores. He begins to question the very assumptions on which his life is built-the so-called American dream, with the abject failure of its healthcare system, patient and neighbors who perpetuate racism, a town flawed with infrastructure, and a history that doesn’t see him in it. Yungman faces a choice-he must choose to hide his secret from his family and friends or confess and potentially lose all he’s built. Yungman’s life is thrown into chaos-the hospital abruptly closes, his wife refuses to spend time with him, and his son is busy investing in a struggling health start-up. And one day, a letter arrives that threatens to expose it. He immigrated from Korea after the Korean War, forced to leave his family, ancestors, village, and all that he knew behind.

Every day for the last fifty years, he has brushed his teeth, slipped on his shoes, and headed to Horse Breath’s General Hospital, where, as an obstetrician, he treats the women and babies of the small rural Minnesota town he chose to call home. Yungman Kwak is in the twilight of his life.

A sweeping, lyrical novel following a Korean immigrant pursuing the American dream who must confront the secrets of the past or risk watching the world he’s worked so hard to build come crumbling down.ĭr.

The Evening Hero by Marie Myung-Ok Lee