Snow Hunters by Paul Yoon

In 1954, 25-year-old Yohan travels from North Korea to Brazil. He leaves behind his family and country as well as the South Korean camp in which he’d been interned for two years. He becomes the apprentice of Kiyoshi, a Japanese tailor, who treats him with dignity and cares for him when traumatic war memories paralyze him.

Gradually several other people—Peixe, the local church’s groundskeeper, and Santi and Bia, two beggar children who slip in and out of Yohan’s life—fill his longing for connection after many distressing losses. These seemingly inconsequential relationships become the foundation on which Yohan builds a new life, one still often marked with solitude and loneliness.

In Snow Hunters, Yoon’s sharp attention to detail, evoking nations as diverse as the two Koreas, Japan, and Brazil, reveals commonalities among all people and the longing for community that binds us all. (Simon & Schuster)