Imagine being sucker punched with damning information. Then imagine being sucker punched with damning information after a family member is gunned down in front of you. Now that you have braced yourself for that, you might be ready to read Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha. Set in the ultra present day (August and September of 2019), this book flicks back to events in the past as they haunt two families from very different worlds. While wildly ambitious in churning up deep subjects long faced by people of all races, and classes, I got lost in my own head, struggling to make clear in my mind where I needed to focus.
Cha holds a modern mirror (influenced by the BLM and anti-Trump sentiments) up to historical events (the 1991 murder of a young black girl by a Korean store keeper in the Koreatown neighbor of LA), while forcing readers to look at their own history of mistakes and shortcomings. Are we always what we project to the world? Is there a mistake we made and have tried since to cover over. But isn’t that what makes us all human? Is there ever possibility for redemption?
Despite my lack of focus, this is a fantastic opportunity to look at faith, disappointment, racism, family, and redemption on the foundation of actual events. I would fully recommend, and encourage you to pick this one up and give it a good read. Perhaps you can help this poor reviewer make sense of a wonderful book they simply missed the boat on.
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