When Joanna Catherine Scott’s three adopted Korean children begin to show a desire to explore their Korean heritage and their familial roots, the entire family embarks on the journey. But the response from the Korean orphanage where the children had been housed prior to their adoption is disappointing; their father was dead, but no information about their mother was forthcoming. What the children themselves knew, however, was that the woman who signed them over to the orphanage was a family friend, and not their mother. Based on these, and a few other scant details and memories, the three siblings then asked Joanna Catherine Scott, their American adopted mother, a writer, to create the life story of their Korean birth mother in the form of a novel. The Lucky Gourd Shop, written in only three months, was the result.

This is the story of Mi Sook, abandoned among trash bins behind a coffee shop at her birth and subsequently "adopted" by the various owners of the shop. She grows up, knowing only the back room of the shop as her home, but eventually marries and has a family of her own. Tragedy and bad luck (and bad choices) mean a difficult life for Mi Sook, who eventually loses her children. This story of a mother's most tragic loss is one that Scott can relate to personally, having lost custody of her three biological children when she divorced her first husband (she has since reunited with them, but admits to ongoing feelings of guilt). She says the stigma that came with this loss of custody, and the idea, held by many, that she must have been an unfit mother, made her to want to defend Mi Sook in her story. Although the ending is not strictly speaking a happy one, it is nonetheless a story of redemption, and success of a sort.

Scott’s knowledge of Korea is evident; the detail is both convincing and delicious to read. The Lucky Gourd Shop describes rough lives but is gently written; the language, simple and lyrical, is as engaging as the story itself. It's wonderful to find a book that makes you want to find out what's next, to turn the pages until there are no more. This is one such story.
Published by Washington Square Press (an imprint of Simon and Schuster), the book includes a WSP Reader's Club Guide comprising a background to the story by the author as well as 18 questions and topics for discussion.

Karmel Schreyer, The Asian Review of Books

Karmel Schreyer writes educational materials for Asian children and is the author of a young-adult novel, Naomi: The Strawberry Blonde of Pippu Town. Great Plains, 1999.