Pachinko meets Homegoing in this powerful story of family separation and reunion amid love and war from a Reese’s Book Club LitUp fellow.
“Bora Lee Reed has written 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.
“Bora Lee Reed has crafted not just an intimate portrait of the Korean War, but a moving love song to Korea. 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
“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 on every page.“- Kathryn Ma, author of The Chinese Groove.
About Bora
Bora Lee Reed has an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College and an MA in theology from the Graduate Theological Union. She was a 2023 Reese’s Book Club LitUp Fellow. She lives and works in Berkeley, CA.
Her debut novel, Song for Another Home, will be published by Simon and Schuster in July 2026.
When news hits in 1950 that the Americans have entered the war between North and South Korea, Oksoon and her family believe the fighting will soon end. But then China joins the war, and they’re forced to flee their home in Pyongyang. Journeying from the 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 benefactors. 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, 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.
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