Flashlight

One summer night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the breakwater. Her father is carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found on the beach, soaked to the skin, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, is Korean, but was born and raised in Japan; her mother, Emi, was born and raised in Japan as well, though she is not Japanese. These parents meet as damaged young people in Tokyo. They fall in love, marry, and eventually move to America. But their marriage deteriorates over the course of their lives, and the violence of their relationship extends into their family. Louisa and her mother survive the tragedy on the breakwater, but just barely. The aftermath of that night reverberates through the decades. For nearly fifty years, Louisa doesn't see her father, and in that time she becomes a translator of Japanese language and literature. She constructs an identity, a livelihood, and a family of her own. Then one day, at the age of fifty-eight, she receives a letter from a woman in Japan. The letter contains devastating news. It is the catalyst for Louisa to finally see her father, to understand the past and her mother's sacrifice, and to discover how trauma is passed down, sometimes without words—and how breaking the cycle requires confronting it head-on. Gorgeously written and emotionally powerful, Flashlight takes us through trauma, endurance, and recovery, showing how literature and translation can provide solace and connection. A stunning exploration of memory, family, identity, and the ways we piece together meaning out of the difficult lives we've been given, Flashlight is a tour de force.