KAY'S LUCKY COIN VARIETY

A debut novel about dreams and tradition colliding in a Korean corner store.

"Fragments of memory, like glitter, captured our final few moments in Korea. I remember being mean to Chun-Ha because we were dressed in matching outfits, white shirts and blue-and-black checkered overalls; watching my dad standing among the men, smoking cigarettes, looking up at the sky and commenting on the good flying weather; thinking my mother and aunts looked like clowns, their mascara smeared by tears; smelling the faint scent of cinnamon on my grandmother's breath as she slipped a coin into my hand and told me it had magical powers to keep me safe, no matter where I was."

Mary's mother has no doubt when it comes to her only daughter's future; she will give up her foolish dream of becoming a writer, graduate from university, and marry a young Korean man with good prospects who will lift her out of the drudgery of running a downtown convenience store. The sacrifices she and her husband have made – long hours for little money, the loss of their traditional ways, of even the Korean names for her two children (Yu-Rhee and Chun-Ha) – will be more than repaid by future success. With the arrival of a promising Korean suitor, Joon-Ho, events escalate in ways that neither mother nor daughter imagined, catching the entire family in a web of deceit and violence.

Told through the eyes of a rebellious young woman, Kay's Lucky Coin Variety captures the family secrets, forbidden loves, and domestic assaults that complicate the lives of those caught between two cultures. This is a unique and imaginative debut novel, written in the tradition of Monica Ali's Brick Lane and Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

ANN CHOI, originally from Chung-Ju, South Korea, immigrated to Canada in 1975 and is the 2012 winner of the Marina Nemat Award. She lives in Toronto.