The Cracked Onggi

About this book

In 2024 Koreatown, Los Angeles, seventeen-year-old Joon Park would rather design apps than help save his family's failing banchan restaurant. When developers offer to buy the block and a health-inspection scare exposes how fragile Park's Banchan has become, a cracked fermentation jar found in the basement opens a different kind of crisis. Inside are his grandmother Hae-won's wartime diary, coded recipes, and a packet of heirloom chili seeds carried through refugee-stricken Busan during the Korean War. As Joon, his practical older sister Mina, and an unexpected classmate begin translating the diary, they uncover a contested family history tied to a coastal plot, while Hae-won's fading memory and Joon's father's rigid devotion to tradition strain every relationship in the kitchen. Told across two eras, this is a story of food, silence, protest, and the difficult work of carrying a family forward without pretending the past was simple.

Book details

Genres:

Historical Fiction, Young Adult, Family Saga, Contemporary Realism

Language:

en

Published:

2026-07-17

Content rating:

PG-13