Miracle Creek

In this gripping courtroom drama, an explosion in Miracle Creek, Virginia, destroys the business of South Korean immigrants Pak and Young Yoo and puts their daughter Mary into a monthslong coma. As arguments mount against the woman accused of starting the fire, Young struggles with a question many immigrants must face. Maybe she shouldn’t have brought her child to the US, where Mary struggles as a teenager and where she was almost killed. The tension between the two generations resonated with me as a parent and immigrant. As Young hopes to discover who caused the explosion that killed two other… show more.

The best books—legal thrillers or otherwise—transport you to an entirely different world. Miracle Creek does that as well as any book I’ve read in recent years. By the time I was finished, I not only felt like I’d gotten a masterclass in trial procedure, and was floored by the reveal, but I actually thought I’d learned something important about the immigrant experience as well as the difficulties all parents face in wanting to protect their children. 

Have you ever heard of HBOT therapy? I hadn’t either, but after reading Angie’s Miracle Creek, you’ll know it stands for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and that people enter these pressurized chambers for all sorts of purported health benefits. Now imagine just what could go wrong in a place that has compressed oxygen, furious protestors, and a lit match. Right? Kaboom! This novel has so much page-turning momentum that you will have to force yourself to stop reading. Or, you can be weak like me and devour it in a single sitting. Get yourself prepared to go knee-deep into… show more.