“Painfully, happily, and with passion, I will overcome life’s waves and survive.”

A heart-warming story about family as told by three women

Rights sold to Germany, UK, USA, Russia, Thailand and Japan  

The main character of The Picture Bride is an 18-year-old girl name Willow who lives in a small village in Gimhae, Gyeongsang Province during the Japanese occupation. Because Willow’s father, who was a soldier in the Righteous Army, died fighting the Japanese Empire, her mother has had to raise Willow and her younger brother by herself. Despite being a yangban (aristocrats of the Joseon dynasty), Willow is unable to go to school or study like her brother because she is a girl. Then one day, a matchmaker comes with an offer for marriage. The marriage proposal, however, is for a picture marriage: a type of marriage that existed during the Japanese occupation in which Korean women were sent to Hawaii after only exchanging pictures with Korean men who immigrated there for work. Women in their teens and twenties who were married off under such circumstances were called “picture brides.”

Willow, Hong-ju, and Song-hwa are the names of the three picture brides of this story—women who stood in line at the immigration office, planning on immigrating to Hawaii in hopes of a better life. But different fates await each of these three women, who bravely crossed the Pacific Ocean, leaving behind their home and their parents in search of a better life. Hong-ju, who dreams of a marriage of “natural love,” meets a man who looks twenty years older than his picture; Song-hwa, who wants to escape from her life of ridicule as the granddaughter of a shaman, meets a lazy drunkard. And then there’s Willow, whose 26-year-old groom, Taewan, looks just as he did in his picture.

But the excitement of coming to a faraway foreign land and marrying a new person is short-lived. Taewan, who still has feelings for his first love, is unable to open up to Willow. Then, Willow’s friend Hong-ju, whom with together Willow travelled to Hawaii from their hometown, leaves Willow for a different region of Hawaii. Worse yet, not only is Willow severely discriminated against by the White managers of the sugarcane field, she is also treated poorly by Japanese immigrants because she is from Joseon, a colony of the Japanese Empire. And just like that, Willow, who had hopes of studying in Hawaii and sending money back to Korea, is met with the hard reality of life as an immigrant.

Even after putting down this book, readers’ ears will continue to ring with the voices of three women who loved, stuck together, and put down roots in a foreign land.

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About the author

Lee Geum-Yi debuted in 1984 by winning the Saebot Literature Prize for her short children’s story “Yeonggu and Heukgu.” She has received the love of countless readers and has published more than 50 books, including the titles You Too Are a Twilight Lily, Yujin and Yujin, You’re Just a Little Different from Me, Stories of Adolescence, Is It Okay If I Go There?, and Like Princess Mangnani. In 2020 she was a finalist for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. 

1917년, 어진말
거울 속 여자, 사진 속 남자
알로하, 포와
5월의 신부들
삶의 터전
떠나온 사람들
에와 묘지
소식
1919년
호놀룰루의 바람
떠도는 삶
윗동네, 아랫동네
와히아와의 무지개
판도라 상자
나의 엄마들

작가의 말
참고 자료