It's bittersweet to crack open The Caregiver, Samuel Park's long-awaited follow-up to his luminous, romantic epic set in Korea, This Burns My Heart (2011). Park died of stomach cancer in 2017, so his second full-length novel is also his last. It's a tender mother-daughter story that alternates between 1980s Brazil and present- day Los Angeles, two places that Park—who was born in Brazil and lived in Los Angeles for years—knew well.

Mara Alencar left her native Brazil in the 1980s at age 16, fleeing that country's turmoil. Ten years later, she's living in Los Angeles in a tiny apartment with two other Brazilian expats and drifting through her days as a caregiver to a cancer-stricken woman in Bel Air. A wealthy 40-something, the divorced and childless Kathryn calls Mara her adopted daughter and jokes about leaving her house to Mara when she dies. Despite this professed affection, Kathryn knows little about the woman who sees to her comfort on a daily basis.

Mara likes it that way. She's trying to forget her past—and her brave and impetuous mother, Ana, who spurred Mara's escape to the U.S. thanks to her connections with revolutionaries. Although Mara hasn't seen or spoken to her mother since leaving Brazil, Ana haunts everything Mara does and every choice she makes.

As chapters alternate between Mara's past in Brazil and her present-day life in California, Park explores what it means to care for someone and the beauty of human resilience and survival. Though the title most obviously refers to Mara, it's also a callback to Ana, a woman full of fierce affection for her daughter. "I would be loved again and again," thinks Mara, "and it was because she taught me how."

 

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

This moving posthumously published novel by Park (This Burns My Heart) examines the relationship between a mother and daughter after years of mutual misunderstanding. Ana, a voice-over actress, struggles to provide for her six-year-old daughter, Mara, in late 1970s Rio de Janeiro. Desperate for money, Ana takes on a dangerous job with revolutionaries seeking to overthrow the corrupt police chief. What immediately transpires remains opaque to Mara—and to the reader—but it becomes apparent to Ana that she must separate from her daughter to save her from retaliation. Mara, with the help of her mother, escapes to California and years later finds work caring for a woman who's dying of stomach cancer. During their time together, Mara begins to understand Ana in new ways as she considers her role as a caretaker. Although the story occasionally lacks believability—particularly surrounding the plot against the police chief—readers will relish the wistful yearning that Park evokes. This beautiful novel is a moving meditation on the mutual dependence and unbreakable bonds of family. (Sept.)