“Brilliantly paced and beautifully told, Inheritance is above all about family and how, despite our best intentions, we so often do damage to the ones we most love. Jane Park’s characters are ones we can all relate to, working their way through a minefield of past traumas and misunderstandings and misplaced expectations in the hopes of reaching, finally, a place of acceptance and healing.”
— Nino Ricci, Governor General Literary Award winner for Lives of the Saints and The Origin of Species
Park's gorgeous debut novel, Inheritance, achingly encapsulates an immigrant family coming to terms with their closest, yet least empathic, relationships: with each other…Jane Park's lyrical debut novel, Inheritance, resonantly confronts multigenerational family tensions exacerbated by hidden traumas.
-Shelf Awareness, starred review
“An unforgettable debut novel. With her beautifully written novel, Park reminds us that hope is precious, redemption is possible, and forgiveness is always within reach.”
— Helena Rho, author of Stone Angels and American Seoul
“Compelling with an emotional clarity, Park’s debut novel balances heartbreak and hope in a poignant exploration of the realities that come with calling Canada our home.”
- Ann Y.K. Choi, author of All Things Under the Moon and Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety
“Jane Park has written a well-crafted, nuanced story about a family aching to present well, expressing love through duty and atoning for past sins. Inheritance is a must read for all children of immigrants, doubly so if you’re Korean in North America.”
— Ins Choi, playwright of Kim’s Convenience
"The book offers many astute insights into the immigrant experience and racism in Canada during the 1990s.
Readers seeking stories about the intergenerational impacts of the Korean War and the challenges Korean immigrants faced will find Park’s novel satisfying, with its strong pacing and plotting and well-developed characters."
—Library Journal
“With Inheritance, Jane Park peels back the familiar. It is a novel about unearthed family secrets … secrets maybe best kept buried, but impossible to ignore.
Propulsive from the start, this debut is both intimate and unforgettable. Certainly, an important contribution to Asian writing in Canada and beyond.”
— Jenny Heijun Wills, Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related and Everything and Nothing At All: Essays
“Sparsely written and deeply affecting, Inheritance lingers long after the final page—a quiet, devastating meditation on guilt, parental expectations, and the lasting consequences of generational silence. As a Canadian child of immigrants, I know this book will stay with me for a long time.”
—Rachel Phan, author of Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family and Belonging
“Jane Park’s Inheritance is a searching and devastating portrait of a family reckoning with historical trauma, and the cost of migration and assimilation. A tender, finely observed, insightful debut.”
—Su Chang, author of The Immortal Woman
“A powerful and gripping novel about a Korean-Canadian woman who returns to her childhood home in small town Alberta, where she is forced to confront the consequences of her complicity in a decades old incident that left her family in tatters.”
— Edward Lee, author of The Laundryman’s Boy
“A beautiful debut. A wide-ranging meditation on the Korean immigrant experience that explores family, ambition, longing and belonging.”
—Suji Kwock Kim, Walt Whitman Award winner for Notes from the Divided Country