Comfort Woman

<b>Powerful...a poignant and powerful debut. -- The Los Angeles Times <p/></b>Possessing a wisdom and maturity rarely found in a first novelist Korean-American writer Nora Okja Keller tells a heartwrenching and enthralling tale in this her literary debut. <i>Comfort Woman</i> is the story of Akiko a Korean refugee of World War II and Beccah her daughter by an American missionary. The two women are living on the edge of society--and sanity--in Honolulu plagued by Akiko's periodic encounters with the spirits of the dead and by Beccah's struggles to reclaim her mother from her past. Slowly and painfully Akiko reveals her tragic story and the horrifying years she was forced to serve as a comfort woman to Japanese soldiers. As Beccah uncovers these truths she discovers her own strength and the secret of the powers she herself possessed--the precious gifts her mother has given her. <p/>A <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i> bestseller <br>In 1995 Nora Okja Keller received the Pushcart Prize for Mother Tongue a piece that is part of <i>Comfort Woman</i>.