This Burns My Heart

Chamara is difficult to translate from Korean to English: To stand it, to bear it, to grit your teeth and not cry out? To hold on, to wait until the worst is over? Such is the burden Samuel Park’s audacious, beautiful, and strong heroine, Soo-Ja Choi, faces in This Burns My Heart, an epic love story set in the intriguing landscape of postwar South Korea. On the eve of marriage to her weak, timid fiancÉ, Soo-Ja falls in love with a young medical student. But out of duty to her family and her culture she turns him away, choosing instead a world that leaves her trapped by suffocating customs.

In a country torn between past and present, Soo-Ja struggles to find happiness in a loveless marriage and to carve out a successful future for her only daughter. Forced by tradition to move in with her in-laws, she must navigate the dangers of a cruel household and pay the price of choosing the wrong husband. Meanwhile, the man she truly loves remains a lurking shadow in her life, reminding her constantly of the love she could have had.

Will Soo-Ja find a way to reunite with her one true love or be forced to live out her days wondering “what if ” and begin to fully understand the meaning of chamara?

He is not just telling her to stand the pain, but giving her comfort, the power to do so. Chamara is an incantation, and if she listens to its sound, she believes that she can do it, that she will push through this sadness. And if she is strong about it, she’ll be rewarded in the end. It is a way of saying, I know, I feel it, too. This burns my heart, too.

Praise for This Burns My Heart:

“This Burns My Heart is quietly stunning—a soft, fierce story that lingers in the mind. Samuel Park is a deft and elegant writer; this is a very exciting debut.”

—Audrey Niffenegger, New York Times bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry

"This Burns My Heart  is at once a passionate and sensitive love story and a fascinating historical novel set against the cultural dislocations of a rising South Korea.  In his heroine Soo-Ja, Samuel Park has created an emotionally resonant character that readers will root for and long remember."

—John Burnham Schwartz, bestselling author of The Commoner and Reservation Road 

"Both an epic love story and an intimate depiction of life in post-war Korea, This Burns My Heart introduces a singular heroine whose passions, struggles, and triumphs are mirrored in our own. Samuel Park is one of those rare writers whose talent transcends the limits of race and gender."

—Wendy Lee, author of Happy Family

“This Burns My Heart captured me with a heroine who is both irresistible and flawed, and engrossed me with increasing twists in a triangle of love and sacrifice. The story explores how a fateful choice colors a decade of marriage, and challenges a young woman’s ambition already constrained by traditional Korean culture. Sam Park paints all the flavors of post-war Korea in this vivid debut, and his understanding and expression of the human heart is universal.”

—Eugenia Kim, author of The Calligrapher’s Daughter

"Samuel Park's astonishing novel, This Burns My Heart, provides mesmerizing perspective into the life of a Korean wife and lover—intricate and intimate as only a woman's secret life can be."

—Jenna Blum, New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers 

“This Burns My Heart never loses touch with the human passion at the core of its epic romance.  Writing prose with the beauty of poetry, Samuel Park traces a young woman's journey to hard-won maturity, alongside the meteoric rise of post-war Korea, in a novel which shines with eloquence and wisdom.”

—David Henry Hwang, Tony-Award winning author of M. Butterfly

“This Burns My Heart is a delicate yet powerful story of love, loss, and endurance. The emotional world of the heroine, Soo-Ja, is beautifully realized; I found myself caught up in her dramas from start to finish, and was reluctant to part with her at the novel’s close. A lovely, romantic, haunting book.”

—Sarah Waters, author of The Little Stranger, Fingersmith, and Tipping the Velvet

"The very talented Samuel Park weaves a compelling, vivid story of one family's evolution that deftly mirrors Korea's development from ancient country to modern society."

—Janice Y.K. Lee, New York Times bestselling author of The Piano Teacher

“An unflappable heroine anchors Park's epic post-Korean War love story … But this is no quiet tale of yearning: the plot kicks in with an unexpected fierceness, and the ensuing action—a kidnapping, fist fights, blackmail—make for a dramatic, suck-you-in chronicle of a thrilling love affair.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Captivating … Park's novel can be read as a contemplation of loss and the angst of unrequited love, much like Dr. Zhivago … First-rate literary effort.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“A vivid and involving novel … Park portrays, with penetrating compassion, individuals trapped in soul-crushing, sexist traditions … Smart, affecting, and unabashedly melodramatic, Park’s novel of adversity, moral clarity, and love is consuming and cathartic.”

—Booklist

"An unflappable heroine anchors Park's epic post — Korean War love story (after Shakespeare's Sonnets). Having grown up in a privileged home in Daegu, Soo-Ja, a brilliant and ambitious 22-year-old woman, has dreams of being a diplomat in Seoul. After her father refuses to let her leave home, however, she sets out to find and marry a weak man who will allow her to make her own decisions. The first candidate is Min, a young revolutionary, who pursues her from afar, writing her letters from Seoul, one of which puts her on a path to meet a charismatic student leader, Yul. Although her feelings for Yul are strong, she marries Min and is immediately faced with the cold realities of his corrupt and hateful family and the realization that she isn't any closer to getting to Seoul. Her responsibilities and, soon, a daughter, keep her trapped in a loveless marriage as she longs for Yul, now a doctor, and a better life. But this is no quiet tale of yearning: the plot kicks in with an unexpected fierceness, and the ensuing action — a kidnapping, fist fights, blackmail — make for a dramatic, suck-you-in chronicle of a thrilling love affair. (July)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Chamara is difficult to translate from Korean to English: To stand it, to bear it, to grit your teeth and not cry out? To hold on, to wait until the worst is over? Such is the burden Samuel Parks audacious, beautiful, and strong heroine, Soo-Ja Choi, faces in This Burns My Heart, an epic love story set in the intriguing landscape of postwar South Korea. On the eve of marriage to her weak, timid fiancé, Soo-Ja falls in love with a young medical student. But out of duty to her family and her culture she turns him away, choosing instead a world that leaves her trapped by suffocating customs.

In a country torn between past and present, Soo-Ja struggles to find happiness in a loveless marriage and to carve out a successful future for her only daughter. Forced by tradition to move in with her in-laws, she must navigate the dangers of a cruel household and pay the price of choosing the wrong husband. Meanwhile, the man she truly loves remains a lurking shadow in her life, reminding her constantly of the love she could have had.

Will Soo-Ja find a way to reunite with her one true love or be forced to live out her days wondering “what if ” and begin to fully understand the meaning of chamara?

He is not just telling her to stand the pain, but giving her comfort, the power to do so. Chamara is an incantation, and if she listens to its sound, she believes that she can do it, that she will push through this sadness. And if she is strong about it, shell be rewarded in the end. It is a way of saying, I know, I feel it, too. This burns my heart, too.

Caught between tradition and modernity in 1960s South Korea, a woman in an unhappy marriage struggles to give her daughter a good life. 

Samuel Park is an Assistant Professor of English at Columbia College Chicago.  He is a graduate of Stanford and the University of Southern California, where he earned his doctorate in English.  He is the author of the novella “Shakespeare’s Sonnets” (Alyson Books, 2006) and the writer-director of the short film of the same name, which was an official selection of numerous domestic and international film festivals.  He currently divides his time between Chicago and Los Angeles.