Starred Review The author of the Printz Award Book A Step from Heaven (2001) tells another contemporary Korean American story of leaving home. This time, though, love is as powerful as the intense family drama. The focus is on high-school-senior Mina, trapped in the web of lies invented to satisfy her overbearing mom, Uhmma, who expects Mina to attend Harvard and escape the drudgery of their small-town dry-cleaning store. Mina's brilliant friend, Jonathan Kim, helps her cheat and steal. She uses him, but he thinks he loves her d he eventually rapes her. Then Mexican immigrant Ysrael, a gifted musician on his way to San Francisco, comes to work in the store, and he and Mina fall passionately in love. Will she go with him and make a new life free of lies? Ysrael is too perfect, just as Uhmma is demonized, but both are shown from Mina's viewpoint, and it is her struggle with her secrets that is spellbinding. Alternating with Mina's first-person narrative are short vignettes from the perspective of Mina's deaf younger sister, who Mina protects. The conflicts of love, loyalty, and betrayal are the heart of the story d they eventually show Mina her way.

Academic pressure from her Korean American immigrant mother has led narrator Mina to concoct a string of lies; she also must hide her love for migrant worker Ysrael. Lyrically written alternating chapters follow her younger sister Suna, who lives in Mina's shadow. Fluidly tying everything together is the novel's focus on the act of waiting, with all its inherent anticipation.

What defines success? For one immigrant Korean mother, it is nothing less than a Harvard education. Seventeen-year-old Mina has created a high-school life filled with the illusion of straight A's and a topnotch college preparatory program in order to meet the overwhelming demands and expectations of her controlling Uhmma. Aided by former boyfriend and fellow Korean Jonathan, Mina adds some cheating to her life of lying. Her younger, hearing-impaired sister Suna, viewed as "damaged" by Uhmma, and the forbidden love and realistic advice of new, Mexican boyfriend Ysrael, ultimately force a sense of accountability in Mina. In an open-ended and arresting conclusion, she begins to face the truth within herself. Once again Na has created a compelling drama riveted with emotional anguish. She draws her characters completely from within their souls, expressing the dreaded fear and doubt of protagonist Mina, which is brought on by the harshness and overbearing parental presumptions of Uhmma, and complicated by the loving responsibility for neglected and virtually abandoned sister, Suna. For Mina, success will depend on how she confronts her own desires, voices them to her rigid, insufferable mother and begins to live an honest life for herself. Gripping and engrossing. (Fiction. YA)

The summer before her senior year, Mina's web of lies begins to unravel. She has led her mother to believe that she is president of the honor society and headed for Harvard, yet she can barely maintain her average grades. Fellow Korean-American classmate Jonathon Kim, her mother's idea of perfection, has been helping Mina in her deception. After a single sexual encounter with Jonathon, Mina realizes she is paying a high price for her charade. When Mexican teen Ysrael comes to work at their dry-cleaning store, Mina immediately feels drawn to him. Finally Mina has found someone with whom she can be completely honest. Ysrael encourages Mina to leave El Cajon and all of her mother's expectations to start a new life with him in San Francisco. When Mina's mother fires Ysrael for something Mina has done, she must choose between her own desires and the responsibility she feels to her family. The drama unfolds in chapters that alternate between the points of view of Mina and her hearing-impaired younger sister, Suna. Mina's first-person voice convincingly describes the impact of the secrets she guards, while the use of a third-person perspective in Suna's chapters underscores the distance their mother keeps from her handicapped daughter. Several secondary themes detract from the main thread of Mina's story, yet Na (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">A Step from Heaven) delivers a powerful novel about the pressures of parental expectations and how secrets can tear a family apart. Ages 12-up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(June)

Gr 8 Up-The pack of lies about her academic achievement that Mina has told to satisfy her mother's high expectations (she has her heart set on her daughter going to Harvard) is unraveling as her senior year approaches. Jonathon Kim, a Stanford-bound teen and the son of her mother's best friend, has helped with the deception by forging Mina's report cards and backing up her many fictions. He asks too much of her, though, while Ysrael, the attractive new employee in the family cleaning business, encourages her to follow her own dreams-and him-to San Francisco. The tension in this Korean-American family is as uncomfortable as the heat and Santa Ana winds of the southern California setting. Mina's mother's bitterness over her lot in life and her neglect of Mina's hearing-impaired younger sister, Suna, have left the teen responsible. The story is told in two voices: first-person past tense for Mina and a distancing third-person present for Suna, just entering middle school and just beginning to find her own voice. The book is carefully crafted and beautifully written; even the punctuation emphasizes the fact that this is the younger generation's story. The adults speak without quotation marks. Na plays with her readers, suggesting in the prologue that the resolution of this story will come with a car crash, but instead makes Mina's decision about her future a logical outcome of her emotional growth. Accessible and wonderfully discussable, this story of family secrets and family love is a worthy successor to Na's A Step from Heaven (Front St, 2001).-Kathleen Isaacs, Towson University, MD Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Mina's mother has her life planned out for her. After Mina graduates at the top of her class, she will leave the family's laundromat in California and attend Harvard. Mina, a seventeen-year-old Korean American, does not have the high grades that her mother thinks she does. Mina has doctored her report card with the help of Jonathon Kim, the son of a wealthy friend of the family. She does, however, have a plan: She has been stealing small amounts of cash from the register when she does the nightly receipts, and she intends to run away and live on her own after graduation. She feels responsible, however, for supporting her younger half-sister Suna, whom her mother treats poorly. While struggling to decide what she can do with her life, pretending to study for the SAT, and fending off Jonathon's amorous advances, Mina must hide her developing relationship with Ysrael, a Mexican teen who has come to work in their shop while Mina's stepfather recovers from a strained back. Events come to a head when the missing money is discovered. Ysrael is blamed and leaves for music school in San Francisco, and Mina finally stands up to her mother. This Printz award-winning author crafts a difficult book about a girl in a difficult situation. Mina and her sister share the telling of their story. Mina's chapters are in first person, and Suna's are in third. The flipping back and forth creates a distance from both characters. Mina is not particularly sympathetic. The convention of using quotation marks only when English is spoken makes it tough to distinguish Mina's thoughts from conversations in Korean where no quotes are used. Some teens might see themselves in Mina's struggle to free herself from her mother's control, but most will not bother struggling through the flowery language or the slow-moving story.-Timothy Capehart.