“Miracle Creek” by Angie Kim is a literary thriller set in VA around the mysterious fire of the Miracle Submarine that kills two people. The story follows the murder trial a year later.
The novel alternates between the point of view of all the major characters and has lots of twists and turns along in the way. This book was a quick read for me and the ending unpredictable. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

“Nothing will happen,...Tragedies don’t inoculate you against further tragedies and misfortune doesn’t get sprinkled out in fair proportions; bad things get hurled at you in clumps and batches, unmanageable and messy.”

If you have the courage to continue after hitting that thought you will read a gripping account of a day that went horribly wrong. Told from the perspectives of those involved, all trying to justify their thoughts and actions, you are shown a myriad of truths, half-truths, and shreds of the truth. You will become involved in a hand wringing courtroom trial that weaves around the truth, the lies, the fabrications and the best and worst intentions of so many that break into a million pieces.

Everyone should have come forward with the truth but the participants learn that their lies demand commitment. “Once you lied, you had to stick to your story”; even if it means creating irreparable harm and destroying innocent people. Angie Kim has plumbed the depths of her characters and made them so real. She has touched on so many different issues creating a believable scenario that heightens the tension, drama, emotion and ending.

Great Book. Great writing. Greater than great.

Thank you Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for a copy.

Everyone is keeping secrets in the small town of Miracle Creek...

Have you ever watched a episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent? That is what this book reminds me of. It felt like a sensational case that was ripped from the headlines and that keeps you flipping through the pages to find out what happens. All the courtroom drama. All the behind the scenes interviews, thoughts of the suspects and the re-enactment of the crime. I was hooked from the beginning and completely shocked at the end. Bravo!

Thank you NetGalley and Sarah Crichton books for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book. I was so excited when I received the approval to download this book as I was hear so much buzz about this book. The hype is real on this one. The book centers around a murder trial and how it affects this community. This felt a lot like Celeste Ng to me which is probably whyI loved it as much I did.

A wonderful debut novel that had me hooked from the very start. It was a moving story full of drama and suspense until the very end. This is mainly the story of a struggling immigrant family trying to live the american dream of supporting themselves and their daughter going to college. Intertwined with their story are the stories of families struggling with autism, cerebral palsy, infertility and losing a child. It brings to light many struggles that families face every day. Throughout the book there's also a question how a fire started that changed these people's lives forever. Suspenseful and devastating this novel will keep you engaged from beginning to end.
I'm grateful that I received an ARC from Netgalley in return for an honest review. I suggest you run to the nearest bookstore and purchase it when it comes out in 2019!

WOW! Courtroom drama at its best with great characters and thought-provoking questions
Young and Pak Yoo are Korean immigrants who run a hyperbaric chamber medical facility in a rural section of northern Virginia where they treat patients with a variety of conditions, including autism. Protesters threaten to shut down the facility, and one day a fire and a resulting explosion destroys the facility and kills a child patient and a patient’s mother. Elizabeth, the mother of the boy who died in the fire, is arrested for murder and brought to trial, but as the trial progresses we find that a number of people had various combinations of means, motive, and opportunity. The protesters had apparently left before the fire began, but Pak Yoo was not at his normal place in the facility; one of the patients’ mothers had said she felt unwell and was sitting on a nearby creek bank instead of being inside with her son; the Yoo’s teen-aged daughter Mary was sneaking cigarettes in the area, and so on. And who called the Yoo’s insurance company not long before the fire asking about coverage in case of arson?
Most of Miracle Creek takes place during the four days of Elizabeth’s trial. This is courtroom drama at its best, as the story unfolds through witness testimony and the reactions of seven primary affected parties. In addition to the Yoo family and Elizabeth, there is also Matthew, a doctor taking hyperbaric treatment for infertility at the insistence of his wife Janine, and Teresa, a mother who was inside the chamber with her son when it exploded. The structure of the story shifts between the perspectives of all of these characters. This type of structure is hard to pull off well, but Kim uses the unifying element of the trial to achieve a coherent story while at the same time letting us get to know her very human characters. We see the Yoos facing the uncertainties common to most immigrants settling into a new country, and their daughter struggling additionally with being a teen-ager in a new society. Matthew is a doctor who is skeptical of any beneficial effects of oxygen treatment on his sperm motility and is hiding a secret. Elizabeth, the mother of an autistic boy, and Teresa, whose son is severely handicapped from cerebral palsy, face motherhood challenges beyond anything they could have expected. They are all very believable people and sympathetic.
The opening lines of Miracle Creek are “My husband asked me to lie. Not a big lie. He probably didn’t even consider it a lie, and neither did I, at first.” This is only the first of many ethical and philosophical problems our seven characters face. There is lying, but there is also simply hiding the truth. When is it okay to do this? How should justice be served? Where should our loyalties be strongest? In addition, in Elizabeth, Teresa, and Kitt, the mother who dies in the explosion, Kim powerfully and convincingly portrays the anguish experienced by these mothers, who love their children dearly but sometimes wish they were dead. Kim raises these ethical questions in very thought-provoking ways.
Miracle Creek is much more than a legal thriller, but it IS a great legal thriller. The reader is kept guessing whodunit, as it becomes increasingly possible that there are many suspects in addition to Elizabeth. The ending is a real shocker and presents one final ethical quandary whose resolution I cannot wait to debate with my friends.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advance review copy of Miracle Creek and my thanks to Angie Kim for writing such a super book.

Thank to netgalley and the author/publisher for the Arc for my honest review.

I can’t tell you how excited I was to be approved for this arc. I’ve been eyeing this book for awhile. The medical topic, the mystery / thrill aspect. Autism. It all drew me in and intrigued me.
I had high hopes for this book, and I can truly say I wasn’t let down.
It’s a great book, some rare slow moments; But such an interesting book!

"Tragedies don't inoculate you against further tragedies, and misfortune doesn't get sprinkled out in fair proportions; bad things get hurled at you in clumps and batches, unmanageable and messy."

As I close my Kindle after reading the last few pages, I'm absolutely and totally satisfied with the beautiful and moving story I just finished. This type of book is a bit outside my usual genre, but I picked it up because it had several key elements that made it sound appealing: medical stuff (hyperbaric oxygen therapy), autistic children, death (accident, murder, arson?) courtroom drama and family saga. It's a complicated and heartbreaking novel with beautiful writing and well-drawn characters that I could completely relate to and empathize with. There are so many great quotes I could share from the novel, but I'll leave this here: "We all have thoughts that shame us. Hubris. The worst sin."

On a hot summer night, the Miracle Creek Submarine hyperbaric oxygen treatment center is up and running its last dive of the day. Inside are 3 disabled kids and 3 adults -- hooked up with astronaut-like helmets to tubing that connects to the tanks outside. A fire. An explosion. Death and disability. Who is to blame - was it an accident or something worse?

The owners are Korean immigrants trying to give their teenaged daughter a better life in America by setting up this therapy. The mothers who were there were just trying to help their children. The protesters were angry that the mothers wouldn't accept that HBOT was dangerous and experimental. An infertile couple desperate to try anything to conceive. "That was both the best and worst part, that all that happened was the unintended consequence of a good person's mistakes." NO SPOILERS.

Just read this. It would make a great book club selection as there are so many universal truths within to debate and discuss. I can even see this as a fantastic movie. Thank you to NetGalley and Sarah Crichton Books for this e-book ARC to read and review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book! It’s out April 16, 2019 (but FYI, it’s also an April Book of the Month selection!).

Miracle Creek was a great read. An intriguing whodunnit with so many layers to the crime and to the entire cast of characters, it kept me guessing — suspecting, but not knowing — all the way up until the end. And it also broke my heart and showed real humanity throughout.

The story begins on the day of the explosion. Young Yoo is helping her husband, Pak, at the Miracle Submarine — a pressurized oxygen tank that delivers pure oxygen to those inside for a “dive.” This is supposed to help the cells heal more quickly than they would on their own, and the Yoos’ patients include those with autism, cerebral palsy, infertility, etc. But that day, everything spirals out of control, and the barn housing the Miracle Submarine explodes.

Fast forward to a year later, and the mother of one of the children who’d been inside at the time of the explosion is on trial. He and another child’s mother had been killed, and the police believe his mother was tired of caring for a special-needs child, wanted her life back, and strategically placed a lit cigarette on top of a pile of kindling under the oxygen tube so that her child would die.

But as the trial begins, we see that it’s probably not that simple. So many others — the doctor who’d been in the dive to cure his infertility and who’d had a secret friendship (half a wink wink here) with the Yoos’ daughter Mary, the doctor’s wife, another mother who’d been inside the tank, Young, Mary, Pak — all weave their narrative together until nobody (whether inside the story or just reading it) is sure of anything anymore. Who lit the fire? And why?

What emerges from this tangled web of information are a few themes:

- Motherhood, in all its forms. Whether it’s Young and Mary’s complicated relationship, or the demand, competition, stress, guilt, and joy that comes with parenting a special-needs child, it’s all in there.

- Immigration. Mary and Young immigrated to the US from Korea when Mary was young, and Pak stayed behind. This splintered their family in more ways than one.

- Racism. Everyone who either is or is related/married to someone from Korea is touched by racism in their experiences.

- Honesty. With each other and ourselves.

- The fact that every action has consequences, and every word you say affects the people around you in ways that you will never know. That everyone has an untold story, untold experiences. And that if any teeny, tiny thing happened in a different way, everything could be different.

This was really well done, a fantastic debut. Read it — and then let me know so we can talk through it.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and to NetGalley, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A year after a fire burns down a medical facility at Miracle Creek, leaving two dead and several severely injured, this book takes us through the court case that follows. With each chapter, a different person's POV was given, and then picked up again in later chapters. And with each person involved in the case, the story takes another turn. Was what happened really an accident? Each person has their dirty secrets, and their fears about those coming out, and each has issues with what happened and how they influenced it.

It took me a while to get into this book, as the many ttwists and turns, the white lies and also the in-depth background stories on all characters involved made it hard to keep up with. After a certain point though, I was hooked and could not put it down, and the questions on morality, trust and value of life stayed with me after I finished.

Overall, this is a beautifully written, intense, well-crafted courtroom drama that I would very much recommend.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for sharing Angie Kim’s upcoming novel. It was wonderful and so much more than I was anticipating. This is a well-plotted courtroom drama but more than that. There are many stories revealed through the multiple characters and the themes touched on include immigration and marriage but mostly on the love and sacrifices of parents for their children. The descriptions of the mothers’ feelings towards their children were so well-done and amazingly and bravely true to life. This is a great title if you liked Defending Jacob, but I will be recommending this to everyone.

This is an excellent story and not easily categorized - it's a courtroom drama, a mystery, an immigrant story, and an analysis of motherhood and marriage, among many other issues. This story takes place through multiple POVs, and even when the particular character is a distasteful person I was intrigued to see what terrible choice they'd make next.
Kim's writing is excellent, you wouldn't even think this is a debut. I read this book over the course of a day, intrigued to see how the consequences of each choice made that fateful day led to the deaths the trial is focused on. Miracle Creek will make an excellent book club choice; it's a fast paced read with a great deal of nuance to discuss. I look forward to everyone having the chance to read this book for themselves on release day.

Thank you to the publisher via NetGalley for providing me with an arc for review. This in no way influenced my opinion.

This story is being told a year after the events, so first the actual day is being ‘relived’ in court. After that we follow the story of found evidence being discussed, and flashback of the different characters related to this evidence.I really enjoyed this was of telling. Since really soon in the story we know what happened, and you can really start to figure things out yourself!
Within the first 2/3 chapters there were like 10 characters introduced, who all had a play in the story. So in the beginning I struggled a bit with figuring out who was who, and what their connection was with each other. And since we didn’t know the characters really well the flashbacks are a bit hard to follow in the first 100 pages or something.
But even though the beginning was confusing, the story really grabbed my attention. I really wanted to know who did it with what reason. In the beginning there are definitely a certain amount of people possible suspects, all with good reasons, so that made it a bit difficult to figure out. And that was nice, I don’t like it if the offender is found really quickly.
I do think that some of the flashback were a bit too much. Like it was important for the story that Janine and Matt had fertility problems, but I didn’t need a 4 page description of what they all tried to get pregnant. Also Theresa described how happy she was having no ‘duties’ for the first time in forever, but again I didn’t need 3 pages..
But overall I really enjoyed the story. I liked the Korean aspect as well, seeing how it was for them to move to America! I’m not going to day more, since for mysteries it is better if you don’t know too much!

The first thing that struck me upon my reading of Miracle Creek is how fearless Angie Kim is as a writer. The structure of her novel is intricate and complex, weaving through the lens of multiple characters, offering different viewpoints of a particular event/incident. She keeps most of the narration in the third person, which is a smart move. It also lends itself well to the setting of the courtroom, allowing us to take in the testimony and not be distracted by a first person account of inner angst. The only first person narration we are given is at the beginning in the epilogue, the moments just before the fire and the outside view of the barn after the flames have started their song and dance.

Through the testimony we are invited into the inner space of the submarine, with investigations pointing to Elizabeth Ward, mother of Henry Ward, one of the victims in the fire. Elizabeth has been seeking treatment for her autistic son in the HBOT (Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy). Her strange behaviour on the day in question, as well as her location outside the submarine instead of inside it with her son, is what drenches her with culpability. She was also found with the cigarettes and matches that caused the blaze.

This doesn’t mean that our search for the assailant is over. Elizabeth’s mute demeanour in court does not reveal much, though most who look at her believe they see a guilty person. I found myself on the fence, acknowledging that Elizabeth must have at times felt overwhelmed in dealing with Henry’s autism, but uncertain as to whether a mother could allow herself to take her child’s life for that reason.

Among the complicated mother-child relationships is Young and her daughter Mary. Young doesn’t understand why there is a distance between them. What she doesn’t know is that Mary resents her for her silent acquiescence to the move to America, despite being strongly against it. She detests her mother for her obedience, for not asserting herself in things that matter. As a result, Mary starts to align herself with her father Pak, the man in charge of the Miracle Submarine, who was noticeably missing from the site when everything went down. Often we see the two in cahoots, trading secrets about the day in question, so much lies and secrets permeating the air that we no longer know what to believe anymore.

As a reader, we sympathise with both Young and Mary. A mother would want the best for a child, even if that means a life away from anything familiar. Mary’s position as an outsider displaces her from everything she knows about herself. Even her name has to change – all these efforts for increased assimilation that only result in further estrangement.

My favorite thing about this book is the dismantling of the saintly mother archetype that has become a social expectation. Mothers feel like they need to show how much they are doing for their children, to paint over their struggles with pink glow and stardust, to pretend everything is okay when it really isn’t. Kim’s focus here is on mothers who care for children with disabilities, the exhaustion that comes from doing a mountain of tasks, oftentimes with nothing to show for it. Every mother just wants their child to fit in and belong, but it is difficult for these kids when they are marked as different. There is much vulnerability here as these mothers bare their souls to us, their hurt and quiet despair radiating the oblivion that surrounds them always. It is an oblivion they constantly step away from because of their roles as mothers.

The characters in Kim’s novel are not bad people, merely good people with very human thoughts. Sometimes these thoughts take on a tangible form, becoming mistakes that develop into fires, destroying in minutes everything that has been so agonisingly build up.

Miracle Creek is about human relationships and human choices, and how we sometimes choose to hide and cloak in secret what we should instead be sharing with those closest to us. Lies and secrets have consequences, so do mistakes. It is these consequences we have to contend with, recognising that truth and morals should always be things to strive for, yet there is great difficulty in accepting those paths. It is the support of those around us that gives us strength to pursue what is right. They help to cushion our fall against the hard reality of life, allowing us to accept and take in our stride our follies and errors, with the hope to do better next time.

Miracle Creek - Pub date April 16, 2019

I tore through this courtroom drama in less than 2 days. There is a TON going on here, and yet none of it feels ancillary or unnecessary. Every character we meet has purpose, and has a life much more complex than meets the eye. It can be tricky to tell a story this nuanced with multiple narrators and keep the reader from getting confused, but I was gripped by each account, each character's perspective and perception of the tragic events around which this story centers. There are some controversial elements at play here; non-traditional medical procedures, mothers of autistic children being honest about how hard their lives are and fantasizing about what things would be like with "normal" children, inappropriate conduct with a minor - and yet Kim doesn't pass judgment or make commentary on any of it. This helps ground the narrative itself, and leaves much to the reader. One of my favorite books I've read all year so far.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book follows the mystery of an arson case on an experimental medical facility. We learn about the events through the court proceedings a year after the fire, where one suspect is on trial. There are many twists and turns as we try to piece together what really happened. I liked this book and appreciated the representation it offered for characters not always written about in fiction- children with disabilities, their parents who struggle to know the best way to care for their children, and an immigrant family. Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for sharing an e-copy of this book with me in exchange for an honest review.

Immigrant hardships, convoluted mystery, family drama, courtroom antics, and absolute heartache—this five-star amazing debut novel from author Angie Kim has it ALL. This book almost had me in tears towards the end and as a bookbitch I rarely cry over my fiction. Thank you so much to @netgalley and the publisher for this special read.

The book focuses on the aftermath of a fiery explosion in a medical oxygen chamber that leaves two dead and more injured. Throughout the legal courtroom battle to find someone guilty and flashbacks to the day of, characters continually reveal more and more of the truths they’ve been hiding from themselves and others to move the plot along. The writing here is tight, the characters are full-fleshed and flawed.

Sometimes it’s irritating when a writer ties every loose thread together in the end, but Kim finds a satisfying way to resolve her multiple plot points without oversimplifying the story. There’s a lot going on here, but Kim binds it all together with a focus on lies. The secrets we keep from our loved ones and the lies we tell ourselves have so much power to harm. This novel explores the damage that they do and the healing powers of love.

Rating: 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars

In this debut book, Angie Kim, pulls together a story with many seemingly disparate threads. Per her Goodreads Author page, I understand that she has personal experience in most of the different areas the books explores. “Miracle Creek” blends stories about a family’s immigration experience from South Korea to the USA; living with and trying to treat autistic and disabled children; and solves a mystery that unfolds as part of a courtroom drama. The story is told in alternating chapters by many of the book’s protagonists.

We meet the Yoo family as the beginning of the book. Pak (the father), Young, (the mother), and their teen-aged daughter Mary, have recently set up the Miracle Submarine business just off Miracle Creek in rural Virginia. The “submarine” is actually a pressurized oxygen chamber which people use hoping that it will help with, or cure, various forms of physical ailments. Horrifically, something goes terribly wrong during a group ‘dive’ and the chamber explodes, killing two of its occupants.

Most of the story is then told in dual storylines from the current day courtroom trial, and the various experiences from all concerned about what lead up to the explosion. While trying to solve the mystery we encounter family deceptions; marital deceptions; teenage angst; immigration assimilation issues; quite a bit of information about various therapies in used trying to treat autism among young children; as well as the hurdles faced in families that have a child with disabilities.

I’ve given this book 3.5 stars, but rounded up to 4 stars. At first I was going to round down to 3 stars, but over the last few days I’ve thought more and more about the plot of the story, the empathy and skill with which the storylines were told, and the book’s ultimate outcome. The fact that those elements were all well communicated made me change my mind and bump up the rating to 4 stars. This author convinced me that she knew her subject matter, and has honed her writing craft in order to tell a story that is compelling, educating, and entertaining.

‘Thank-You’ to NetGalley; the publisher, Sarah Crichton Books (Farrar, Straus, Giroux); and the author, Angie Kim; for providing a free e-ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Whew! What a convoluted web Kim has constructed to describe the trial of a mother whose autistic son was killed during hyperbaric oxygen therapy. It is a complex labyrinthine construction that left me in awe of Kim's writing prowess. There are a number of people who are involved in this tangled web, with chapters devoted to each character. What emerges is the lies and deceptions that occur when not willing to commit to the truth. But packed within this are issues of trust, immigration, loneliness, anger, autism and infertility. However, the field never feels crowded and the peeling of the onion layers leaves one breathless with Kim's cultivation of her craft. It is a book I could read again and again.

It took me a little while to get into this book, in the beginning it was a little difficult to figure out all the characters and their roles in the story. But then it started to fall together and held my interest for the rest of the book.
I found myself learning about hyperbaric oxygen chambers, and seeing what happens when things go wrong, accidentally or by design.

The patients range from moms and their special needs kids, and also a medical doctor; and the operators are recent Korean immigrants. There is a very serious explosion with the chamber and two people are killed, and several others injured. The incident is determined to have been deliberately set by a likely subject and goes to trial. The book goes on to describe the trial, and details the various interactions among the characters, and it keeps you guessing as to what actually happened. It's well worth reading, and it touches deeply on many areas - race and immigration, special needs kids and their moms, people who protested the chamber's existence, marriages, and a criminal trial.