Song for Another Home

Name: Song for Another Home
Brand: 37 Ink
SKU: 9781668096321
Price: 34.80 USD
Availability: InStock

$34.80

Product Variants

Biographical Note:
Bora Lee Reed was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the US as a young child. She grew up in Southern California among a vibrant Korean immigrant community. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and has been awarded residences from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and Ucross. Bora now lives in Berkeley, CA, where she works as the director of communications for UC Berkeley's public policy school.

Review Quotes:
"Brimming with compassion, Song for Another Home is the story of a family divided but never lost, found family equally delightful and heartbreaking, whose triumphs and setbacks will leave readers with a tender, hard-won hope."--Allison King, author of The Phoenix Pencil Company

"A beautifully told, beautifully constructed chronicle not just of war, but of growing up, of storytelling and survival, of the ties that bind both blood family and found family. Song For Another Home is timely, wide-ranging, immersive historical fiction and a magnificent debut." --Laurie Frankel, author of This is How It Always Is

" Song for Another Home imparts both lessons of war and lessons of the heart with intensity and compassion. Each finely-drawn character must face their own struggles and seek their own destiny throughout a story rich in gorgeous detail and powerful feeling. Bora Lee Reed sings to us from every page."--Kathryn Ma, author of The Chinese Groove

"Unflinching in its portrayal of a broken world, Bora Lee Reed's Song for Another Home will break your heart and put it back together again, often on the same page." --Gene Luen Yang, author of American Born Chinese

"SONG FOR ANOTHER HOME is a mesmerizing debut that paints a heartfelt tale of wartime Korean orphanages and shanty towns. Oksoon and Junho, two cousins scrabbling to survive different wartime realities, find that the bonds of both new and old relationships aren't easily severed, despite the odds against them. Beautifully written and shimmering with love, sacrifice, and betrayal, this is a novel that will echo with readers for a long time." --Yangsze Choo, New York Times bestseller of The Fox Wife

"Bora Reed's Song for Another Home is everything I look for in a novel: ambitious and majestic, unforgettable characters, vividly imagined and meticulously crafted, the perfect balance of heartbreak and hope. Reader, prepare to be dazzled by this remarkable story of devotion and sacrifice, lost love and chosen family. A stellar debut from an author whose time is long overdue."--Natalie Baszile, author of Queen Sugar

"A beautiful novel that conjures a whole world - a whole history - with such lightness of touch. I cared deeply for these characters and wept when it was time to say goodbye"--Ruth Gilligan, author of The Butchers

"A moving novel, huge in its scale and evocation of an unsung history, but also perfect in the minutiae that make every gesture feel so present and real. An astonishing debut"--Luke Kennard, author of The Transition

Review Quotes:
"A sweeping, historical tale. A brilliant meditation on family, friendship and the power of the human spirit."--Irenosen Okojie MBE, author of Nudibranch

"A moving novel about storytelling and family that shows historic conflict and change on an intimate scale."--Gurnaik Johal, author of Saraswati

"Conjures a whole world with such lightness of touch. I cared deeply for these characters and wept when it was time to say goodbye."--Ruth Gilligan, author of The Butchers

"An astonishing debut, huge in its scale and evocation of an unsung history"--Luke Kennard, author of The Transition

Publisher Marketing:
Pachinko meets Homegoing in this powerful story of family separation and reunion amid love and war from a Reese's Book Club LitUp fellow.

When news hits in 1950 that the Americans have entered the war between North and South Korea, Oksoon and her family believe the conflict will soon end. But then China joins the war, and they decide to flee their home in Pyongyang despite the freezing temperatures and lack of food. Journeying from the barren, war-torn streets of the North in the winter to the seedy back alleys of the South Korean capital of Seoul in the summer, the family falls in with an unlikely group of miscreants.

Meanwhile, far to the south, Oksoon's cousin Junho seeks refuge at an orphanage for abandoned children. As the institution struggles to keep its doors open, Junho, with his elementary command of English, is tasked with drafting letters to American missionaries and benefactors to ask for money. When the enigmatic director brings her aristocratic niece to the orphanage, Junho finds himself caught between his impulse for survival and his growing affections for the young woman, even though his feelings put him at risk of being expelled from the only safe place he knows.

Movingly rendered, Song for Another Home highlights the power of resilience, the tension between personal dreams and duty to family, and how choices made in a brief moment have consequences that reverberate across time and through generations.

Review Citations:

Booklist 06/01/2026 (EAN 9781668096321, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:Reed, Bora Lee
Bora Lee Reed was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the US as a young child. She grew up in Southern California among a vibrant Korean immigrant community. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and has been awarded residences from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and Ucross. Bora now lives in Berkeley, CA, where she works as the director of communications for UC Berkeley's public policy school.