This is a grand multi-generational story - it reminded me Wild Swans, the Thorn Birds, or East of Eden in that respect. It's a quiet book with a simple style that focused on the day to day lives of characters from four generations. I really didn't know a lot of the historical context and I learned a lot about what Koreans went through when living in Japan.

I absolutely loved most of the book - especially the parts focused on Sunja and her children. But during the last third of the book, we started jumping to a bunch of different characters, and it also seemed like some characters I cared about just vanished for a while. It wasn't enough to completely lose me, but it did become less interesting for me on the back end. It seemed a bit rushed and with too many tangents and characters to keep track of. Still a great book overall, but the first two sections make the book.