A Living Remedy

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From the bestselling author of ALL YOU CAN EVER KNOW comes a searing memoir of class, inequality, and grief—a daughter's quest to understand her adoptive parents' lives, her own journey, and the losses she has faced. In America, unless you achieve extraordinary wealth, helping loved ones as you hoped often remains out of reach. This memoir captures the hollow guilt of those who escape hardship but cannot bring others along. After graduating high school, Nicole Chung eagerly left her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown for a private university on the East Coast, where she finally found the community she longed for as an Asian American adoptee. However, the middle-class life she begins to build for her family starkly contrasts with her upbringing, where financial struggles were the norm and safety nets were nonexistent. The death of her father at sixty-seven, due to diabetes and kidney disease, fills her with grief and anger, as she recognizes the role of financial instability and inadequate healthcare in his early demise. Tragically, less than a year later, her mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the distance between them grows insurmountable amid the Covid pandemic. Through exploring family bonds amidst hardship, this memoir sheds light on persistent inequalities in American society.