Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History

In this touching if uneven debut memoir, journalist Lee investigates the life of her late grandfather, Chul Ha, who was imprisoned by the Japanese during their colonization of Korea in the first half of the 20th century. Chul Ha was incarcerated in 1929 for protesting the Japanese takeover and died in 1936, three years after his release, of tuberculosis he likely contracted in jail. While he was not freely spoken of in Lee’s family when she was growing up in Houston, the author remained curious about his life, and eventually decided to piece his story together. She first sought out her grandmother, Halmoni, who shared that she burned her husband’s books and records out of a fear the government would discover his communist beliefs. While recovering from lung surgery, Lee’s father shared his own recollections of the shame he felt about his father’s imprisonment through a series of emails. Further encounters with friends, family, and acquaintances provided Margaret with more clues, and the account culminates with her presenting Chul Ha’s prison and immigration records to her father, who had previously submitted portions of Chul Ha's history to the Korean government in order to have him re-buried in South Korea as a patriot with national honors. While the pace sometimes flags, with certain sections reading more like a personal journal than a polished memoir, Lee’s quest to lift generations-old stigma inspires. For the most part, this winding investigation of long-buried family secrets succeeds. Photos. Agent: Ayla Zuraw-Friedland, Frances Goldin Literary. (Mar.)

Correction: A previous version of this review mistakenly stated that the author petitioned the Korean government to have her grandfather re-buried. It also mischaracterized the timing of the emails she received from her father.