When her husband dies, ``Akiko'' finds herself stranded in Hawaii with no money, a five- year-old child to care for, and a tenuous hold on her sanity. As the war ends, Soon Hyo escapes to Pyongyang, where she marries an American missionary who knows her only by her hated Japanese name, returns with him to the US, and eventually gives birth to a daughter. Profoundly traumatized, Soon Hyo struggled to survive by imagining herself emptied of her soul. One of hundreds of girls kept like animals in stalls and forced to service long lines of soldiers, Soon Hyo was assigned the name Akiko-the name each girl inhabiting that stall had been given-then raped, beaten, humiliated, and adored on a daily basis, according to each soldier's whim. Poor, orphaned Kim Soon Hyo was only 12 when her oldest sister raised the money for her own dowry by selling Soon Hyo to the occupying Japanese. First-novelist Keller, a Korean-American living in Hawaii, offers a shocking and unusual version of the mother-daughter relationship tale, in which a Korean woman whose experience as a ``comfort woman'' servicing Japanese troops during WW II profoundly distorts her own life and that of her Korean-American daughter.
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