The Language of Blood

Jane Jeong Trenka and her sister Carol were adopted by Frederick and Margaret Brauer and raised in a small Minnesota town—a place "where the sky touches the earth in uninterrupted horizon . . . where stoicism is stamped into the bones of each generation." They were loved as American children without a past.

With inventive and radiant prose, Trenka recounts a childhood of insecurity, a battle with a stalker that escalates to a plot for her murder, and an extraordinary trip to Seoul to meet her birth mother and siblings. Lost between two cultures for the majority of her life, it is in Korea that she begins to understand her past and the power of the unspoken language of blood.

Praise

"The ending it offers is not predictable or easy, but bittersweet, perhaps the only an exile could achieve."—Los Angeles Times

"Original and beautifully written . . . Her journey is winding, but it ends at an important place for both reader and writer."—Publishers Weekly

"The book, a lovely chaos of art and imagination and memory, reads like life itself."—The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

About the Author(s)

Jane Jeong Trenka

Jane Jeong Trenka has won numerous awards and fellowships for hr writing. The Language of Blood is her first book.