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. A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller In 1995, Nora Okja Keller received the Pushcart Prize for 'Mother Tongue', a piece that is part of Comfort Woman.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.

As Beccah uncovers these truths, she discovers her own strength and the secret of the powers she herself possessed-the precious gifts her mother has given her. Slowly and painfully Akiko reveals her tragic story and the horrifying years she was forced to serve as a 'comfort woman' to Japanese soldiers. The two women are living on the edge of society-and sanity-in Honolulu, plagued by Akiko's periodic encounters with the spirits of the dead, and by Beccah's struggles to reclaim her mother from her past. Comfort Woman is the story of Akiko, a Korean refugee of World War II, and Beccah, her daughter by a. Possessing a wisdom and maturity rarely found in a first novelist, Korean-American writer Nora Okja Keller tells a heartwrenching and enthralling tale in this, her literary debut.

Nora okja keller comfort woman