Park Sisters
Meet Frances Park
"Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream" - Greek tragic playright Euripides
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To learn more about my favorite collection of short stories & essays, visit my Shepherd Page.
Listen to Frances talk about "Finding West Virginia" on West Virginia Talk.
AHN LOVE
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A dreamy romp, Ahn Love opens with Margaret visiting her widowed father Sam Ahn for his ninetieth birthday. His crippling loneliness—marked by a conviction that if his orchids ever
bloom, his wife will come back to life—transports Margaret to the Ahns’ seven-day cruise across the Pacific in the summer of ’69 when she was a lovesick teen nicknamed Monkey, when her beloved (if not servile) Uncle Bong betrayed the family, and when her beautiful mother’s encounter with a Brazilian playboy ultimately charted her death a decade later.
Like the seas, the journey had its highs and lows. It was magic, tragic, exotic and erotic—all things new to Margaret, including her romance with the dashing Adam Kang, a young Korean Brit. The two sailed through a whole courtship as if ship years were measured in hours. Indeed, clocked love and lost paradise lay the seeds of Ahn Love.
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EXCERPT:
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Given our history, a walk was in order.
If you think of Blue Stone Circle as a clock, the Ahn house sat at ten o’clock; and legs willing, we’d make it to one o’clock. Ninety degrees northeast, in compass terms. Either way, a short arc. For Sam Ahn, it was less a walk than a shuffle, a far cry from his cha-cha-cha in the moonlight with Mommy so long ago like he owned the ship and the sapphire seas. Now that was a night, set against the vast Pacific Ocean. Picture me, just a girl, taking it all in. Paradise a-go-go. First love, first kisses, lovesick drama that would kill me today, and I mean that in a good way. Yet Mommy’s accident a decade later would always eclipse my teen story. Rightly so.
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PRAISE
What if the voyage that defined your youth still steered your life decades later? In Frances Park’s sweeping new novel, a daughter’s visit to her aging father rekindles the story of a fateful Pacific cruise—a journey of family betrayals, fleeting romance, and choices that ripple across the years. The haunting pull of the past animates the lush and lyrical prose of Ahn Love.
—Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, editor of Bellevue Literary Review, and author of What Doctors Feel
Frances Park steers us through the moving waters of a Korean American family's tale – first love, loss, betrayal, and redemption. Park's lush writing is a seamless voyage between past and present, between a Virginia suburb and a fateful Pacific cruise, that reveals the secrets held within the ebb and flow of the human heart.
– Dana Tai Soon Burgess, author of Chino and the Dance of the Butterfly: A Memoir
Absorbing and utterly human. Through the eyes of Margaret (“Monkey”) with her lost dreams and her lost young love, Frances Park unfolds the bittersweet and at times humorous story of the Ahns, a Korean family in America. The memorable and moving prose invites readers to travel with the Ahns not only on an SS President Roosevelt adventurous cruise across the Pacific but also to join the author as she takes us on a fifty-year journey across “this dreamy romp we call life.”
– Maria Karametou, visual artist, professor, and author of The Amalgam
A lot can happen in seven days at sea: A misfit uncle can find his purpose. A mother's fate can be decided. Two people can fall in love for the first time. Over the course of this epic cruise and a father's 90th birthday weekend, Ahn Love stirred up all kinds of emotions in me --nostalgia, sympathy, sorrow, hope, delight, and awe of Frances Park's scintillating storytelling. I loved Margaret and her family, and I love this book!
— Suzanne Kamata, author of Cinnamon Beach and River of Dolls and Other Stories
Ahn Love will make your eyes weep, your heart sing, and your soul ache. A stunning gestalt.
– Sean Collins, journalist
Frances Park's Ahn Love is a deeply moving novel that explores the intricate bonds of family, the enduring power of memory, and the unspoken dreams that shape our lives. Through the eyes of Margaret, the youngest daughter, we witness the push and pull of the Ahn family, particularly the relationship with her widowed father and the mysterious Uncle Bong. Park masterfully weaves together past and present, blending reminiscences with the bittersweet realities of human frailty. This beautifully crafted story is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the ways in which love, even when tested by time and tragedy, endures.
– Bill Adler, author of Outwitting Squirrels
Ahn Love is ultimately a story of love, both familial and romantic. Buoyant, bittersweet, heart-stirring.
– Scott Saalman, author of Vietnam War Love Story
My Story
I grew up in an era when the U.S. Census Bureau need only come to my family's house to get a total head count of Koreans in my ‘burb. That reality is often reflected in seventeen books – novels, memoirs, children's books – published in seven languages, along with short fiction and personal essays appearing in over fifty magazines.
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An identity born of two worlds is me in a nutshell. The theme of losing my dad young also haunts much of my work. In my latest novel Ahn Love, I imagine him today, had he lived to the ripe old age of ninety. It all began with a dream of seeing him break into a silly jig in the middle of a crosswalk, years after he died.
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Recent works include my novel Blue Rice, a portrayal of a Korean woman who survived the war with no choice but to acclimate to 1960 white America as she senses her husband’s desertion. The Summer My Sister Was Cleopatra Moon depicts the spiritual deformity of two Korean American sisters growing up in Washington, DC suburbia in the 1970s. My memoir-in-essays That Lonely Spell was praised by Kirkus Reviews as ‘a fresh take on the Korean American memoir by a writer from a generation whose voice has seldom been heard’. Latest accolades include a 2024 Foreword Indies Award and a 2017 Best American Essays Notable.
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In addition, my co-author sister Ginger and I are among the pioneers of Asian American children’s literature, earning many awards. Our first picture book My Freedom Trip: A Child’s Escape from North Korea, the recipient of the 2000 International Reading Award, is taught in schools all over the country. Our latest picture book My Sister’s Doljabi paints a sumptuous picture of one of Korea’s most important ceremonies: a Korean’s child’s first birthday. A glowing Kirkus Review summed the story up as ‘A rich and inviting exploration of a Korean celebration’.
I live outside Washington, DC.