When We Fell Apart

Book excerpt: A smart, debut thriller in which the suicide of a young woman in Seoul sets her boyfriend on a quest to find out why she died—one that becomes a soul-searching exploration of his own identity as a Korean-American. Min-jun Ford, a half-Korean and half-American expat, has never quite felt like he fit in. But he's finally found a refuge in Seoul, a city that offers a home to his cultural identity. Then one day the police come to his office and inform him that his girlfriend, a local university student named Yu-jin, has committed suicide. Min is blindsided and devastated. How could his seemingly happy and successful girlfriend have secretly wanted to die? Or did she? With a powerful government official father and a fraught friendship with her alluring and destructive roommate So-ra, Yu-jin’s life was much more complex than she chose to reveal to Min. And the more he learns about her, the more he begins to doubt he ever really knew her at all...