SLAVE AGAIN
She traded in her prison uniform for shackles of a different kind.
After escaping a North Korean prison camp, Mee-Kyong is hustled over the border and sold into the Chinese underworld. She vows to survive, but sheer determination and willpower won’t save her this time.
Is she fated to remain a slave forever?
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TORN ASUNDER
After graduating from the Secret Seminary, Hannah and Simon are ready to return to their homeland. Their training has equipped them to carry the gospel to a country ravaged by darkness and despair. If necessary, they're even prepared to face the North Korean labor camps, but the hardest part of their mission isn't the hunger, cold, and incessant danger. The hardest part is cutting off contact with one another. In this world of spies, secret police, and informants, Simon and Hannah learn that staying together won't just compromise their ministry. It could cost them both their lives.
Two undercover missionaries delivering a single message of hope. Two Christians willing to die for the sake of the Good News. One love - more powerful than terror, more beautiful than life, and more dangerous than either of them could possibly imagine.
A love so strong, nothing but the grave could overcome it.
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FLOWER SWALLOW
"I never woulda guessed a bowl of curst noodles could cause so much trouble." ~ Woong, North Korea, age unknown
It all started with a curse. When Woong's hunger drives him to steal the fancy meal set out by his superstitious mother, he invokes a shaman's wrath. Soon afterwards, a flood ravages his home, ripping him from his parents and hurtling him into street life during the catastrophic North Korean famine of the 1990s.
Traveling from place to place in order to survive, Woong meets a grandmother whose faith in the Dear Leader enables her to wait patiently for the arrival of food aid, an uncle whose plot to take over a grain silo could land the whole family in prison camp, and a mysterious character who may or may not have an angelic blessing.
Woong's journey is arduous, spanning several winters where cold and sickness are perils as deadly as starvation. Still, he holds on to hope of one day reversing the shaman's curse and forging a new life of freedom and belonging.
Hailed as Alana's most masterful novel to date, Flower Swallow is a touching story appropriate for most ages. Readers of suspense, young adult, and historical fiction will find Woong's story inspiring and uplifting. It has been described as a "Korean Oliver Twist" and compared to "Life is Beautiful" because of its gentle handling of a very heavy topic.
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