A Cab Called Reliable

Winner of the Towson University Prize for Literature
Nominated for the Book-of-the-Month Club's Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction

Ahn Joo Cho emigrated with her family from Korea to Virginia at the age of seven. Two years later, a cab called 'Reliable' took away her mother and her infant brother forever.

Grade by grade in school, Ahn Joo comes of age within an alien society, excelling at creative writing as her home life with her old-fashioned father deteriorates. Language heals her, and saves her. As Ahn Joo enters womanhood, a heart-breaking secret finally sets her free to create her own heritage.

This widely celebrated debut novel approaches growing up in America—whether as an immigrant or an native—from an honest, refreshingly authentic perspective.

Praise

"Rarely does a debut novel make a reader hunger for the author's next book, but anticipation is precisely what one feels after reading A Cab Called Reliable, by Patti Kim. Both elegantly and humorously told, it is the story of one young woman's attempt to span the breach between what is and what ought to be . . . Precise and assured storytelling."—The New York Times Book Review

"[The work of] an obvious literary prodigy . . . Remarkably accomplished."—USA Today

"Affecting . . . Memorable and moving."—Kirkus Reviews

About the Author(s)

Patti Kim

Patti Kim was born in Pusan, Korea, in 1970; she immigrated to the United States in 1974. A Cab Called Reliable is her first novel.