Excerpt from Skinship by Yoon Choi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The song ended, and then there were commercials. Ecstatic voices selling things in English. Mattresses. Insurance.

"I went to see your mother and older sister before I left," she said as another song started up. This made him glance at her sharply. "I had to take a cab, a train, and two buses. I took them some honey medicine cookies and sour persimmons."

"How did she seem?" asked Jae-woo.

"Your mother?" Soo-ah considered her answer. "She seemed at peace. I'm almost certain she recognized me, but your sister said I was mistaken."

"And Eun-jung? How is she?"

Frankly, Jae-woo's sister had seemed exhausted. Exhausted as a way of life, or exhausted as a form of reproach. But Soo-ah said none of those things.

"Older Sister had this message for you," she said to Jae-woo. "She said to tell you—"

"What," he interrupted, "that she needs money?"

"—to call or write from time to time."

"Well then," he said, looking dissatisfied.

She touched her hair again and wondered, despite what Jae-woo had said, whether her perm and drastic cut—her mother's idea—had been a mistake.

"Have you heard about Hong Ki-tae?" she asked to change the subject. "Hong Ki-tae and that girl he married, the plain one, from his village. They had—guess what. Twins."

"So they did," said Jae-woo, driving on.

They drove the length of New Jersey, and then past a blue sign that said: pennsylvania welcomes you. She began to attend more closely to the landscape. Dry autumn cornfields and travel plazas and billboards at intervals. She hugged the purse on her lap and remembered that inside, along with her toothbrush and her passport, was an envelope full of American bills that her father had given to her. Also her gold first-birthday rings in a rainbow silk pouch. She thought with passing pity that Jae-woo had not had a happy family life. She thought of the dark, damp apartment in Suwon that he had shared with his mother and sister, the fading, dusty bolts of silk. She watched the exits flashing by and began to play a little game: This one. No, this one. After some time had passed, Jae-woo signaled and slowed for the Queen Street exit into downtown Lancaster.

Excerpted from Skinship by Yoon Choi. Copyright © 2021 by Yoon Choi. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.