Like all haenyeo husbands, he would spend the rest of the day under the village tree in Hado’s central square with other fathers. Young-sook can’t help it, but seeing those half-and-half children makes her uncomfortable: the boy in shorts, a superhero T-shirt, and clunky tennis shoes, the girl in shorts that barely cover what they’re supposed to cover, earbuds plugged into her ears, and wires trailing down over her barely-there breasts. I’d always heard she could go down twenty and sometimes more meters on a single breath, but already my lungs burned and my heart thumped in my ears. I started out both listening and reading this in print but ended up preferring the audiobook, by far.

The Japanese say ifGrandmother Seolmundae existed and ifthat oreum was the water pathway to her underwater palace,” Shaman Kim went on, “then she abandoned us, as have all our goddesses and gods.Young-sook’s voice comes out even sharper and louder than Gu-sun’s, causing both Kang sisters to look her way.

She gives wonderful descriptions, at times a lot of detail, about the culture of the collective of women, the rituals and rules, spoken and unspoken, how they dive with no equipment and harvest food from the sea.Later, on page 314, Clara recites a proverb attributed Buddha: To understand everything is to forgive. Throughout the decades from Japanese rule to the modern era, the two become close but find their relationship strained as a result of their backgrounds. See was the recipient of the Golden Spike Award from the Chinese Historical Association of Southern California and the History Maker’s Award from the Chinese American Museum. The government labels the haenyeo a cultural heritage treasure—something dying out that must be preserved, if only in memory.

Lisa See has created an enthralling, compelling portrait of a unique culture and a turbulent time in history, but what’s really remarkable about this novel is the characters—two women whose lifelong friendship is tested during impossibly difficult times. There are heart-rending and catastrophic events in this story, and there were several times when I had to pause in my reading to absorb the shock of what these characters that I grew to love went through. Over the years, Young-sook and Mi-ja endure together the loss of parents, the dramas of marriage and childbirth, cruel family members, disruptive technological advances, and the ever-present dangers that accompany their livelihood.

We might even cook and share a little of what we’d brought back in our nets, if the harvest was bountiful. You may not know this, but the cold-water stress that the haenyeo endure is greater than for any other human group in the world. The story unfolds, moving through time telling of the bond they formed as children, as haenyeoIt tells of events in their lives, both happy and heartbreaking as they grow up during the Japanese occupation, through their childhood, their marriages, their children. If not for you, my daughter would have died,” she’d say as she poured buckwheat tea or presented me with a dish of salted smelt, but her eyes sent a darker message. While not everyone on Jeju has found forgiveness, how and why do you think those communities, neighbors, and families have been able to forgive?