Told in alternating points of view, LETTERS TO ANOTHER HOME highlights the tension between personal dreams and duty to family, the power of resilience, and how choices made in a brief moment have consequences that reverberate for lifetimes. A powerful story about what it means to build a life for yourself and your family against all odds.

LETTERS TO ANOTHER HOME
by Bora Lee Reed
37 Ink, Spring 2026
(via Frances Goldin Literary Agency)

North Korea, 1950: Oksoon believes that the war is finally over in Pyeongyang. The Americans are here to stay, she’s told, but her father and eldest brother have gone south and she anxiously waits for their return. When the Chinese army unexpectedly attacks, Oksoon must flee with her mother and second brother in search of safety and to reunite their family. Journeying from freezing winter in the rural north to the seedy back alleys of Seoul during the summer, Oksoon and her family fall in with an unlikely group of miscreants – a prostitute, a baduk gambler, an opportunistic ferryman – and question how far they’ll go, and what moral boundaries they’ll cross, to find their missing relatives.

Meanwhile, far to the south near Jinju, Oksoon’s close cousin Junho flees the war to find refuge at the Lord’s Beloved Home for Children. As the orphanage struggles to keep its doors open, Junho is put in charge of drafting letters to rich American benefactors, convincing them to send money to Korea. But when the enigmatic orphanage director brings her aristocratic niece to stay at the Home – a beautiful young woman harboring a secret – Junho finds himself caught between his impulse for survival and his growing affections, which put him at risk of being expelled from the only safe place he knows.

As Oksoon and Junho make their way towards each other and eventually unite, they fight to save themselves and hold their family together, even as the war threatens to tear everything apart.

BORA LEE REED was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the U.S. as a young child. She grew up in Southern California, among a vibrant Korean immigrant community. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and has been awarded residences from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, and UCross. Bora, a Reese’s Book Club LitUp Fellow, now lives in Berkeley, CA, where she works as the director of communications for UC Berkeley’s public policy school.