Today, we’re taking a peek at Miles From Nowhere by Nami Mun .

First sentence: I’d been at the shelter for two weeks and there was nothing to do but go to counseling or lie on my cot and count the rows of empty cots nailed to the floor or watch TV in the rec room, where the girls cornrowed each other’s hair and went on about pulling a date with Reggie the counselor because he looked like Billy Dee Williams and had a rump-roast ass.

Under the Cover:

And then I saw it, what she had wanted me to see– a humongous white Christmas tree that was as tall as the ceiling and as big as the tree at Alexander’s department store. Knowledge stood with her hands on her hips, studying every Santa head and every strand of silver tinsel clumped on the plastic branches. The flashing lights changed the color of her face, and she smiled up at tree as if the black angel perched on top were singing secrets. I didn’t see any presents, though. Not under the tree or anywhere else in the living room, which was crowded with a deflated couch, a mini refrigerator, record players stacked three high and a coffee table held up by two TV sets. Above the couch hung a poster-sized photo of a black couple. The woman had thick pretty lashes and sat with her hands folded on her lap. Behind her stood a stocky man with tinted glasses and Jheri curls, wearing a velvet suit. The picture made him look as though he had only one hand–a fat one, with a gold pinkie ring, resting on the woman’s thin shoulder.  I was about to point the poster out to Knowledge when I saw that she was under the tree.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered, “it’s lighter than you think.”

She was bent over, picking the tree up thy the stand and telling me to grab the top.

“Are you crazy?” I check behind me.

“Just shut up and help me,” she whisper-shouted.

What a picture she paints! I feel as though I’m in the room, about to become and acomplice!

Miles from Nowhere is the story of Joon, a Korean born teenager growing up in NYC in the 1980s. Joon’s father’s infidelity tears apart the family and the mother’s mental condition cannot repair the remains. This description from the inside cover promises and intense, rough read. Joon spends her teen years in a homeless shelter, escort club, fighting addictions and struggling to survive on a string of part-time jobs.

Last sentence: “I even miss seeng her sick,” he said, and that seemed to me a truth I could hold on to about my mother, a place to begin.

Mun was born in Seoul, S. Korea and grew up in the Bronx. Readers can connect with her on GoodReads and Facebook.