“A transcendent memoir about family, class, and the contours of loss … In her clear, concise prose, Chung makes the personal political, tackling everything from America’s crushingly unjust health care system to the country’s gauzy assumptions about adoption … Chung writes with aching and transcendent longing — for a past she never had; for her flawed home state; and for a more compassionate future … With this work, Chung offers a luminous addition to the literature of loss, from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Notes on Grief to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A Living Remedy is a powerful testament to the failures of our health-care system and to the limits of what most of us can do for those we love.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR Fresh Air

“[A] luminous memoir . . .  [Chung] explores the heartbreaking complexities of loss and the enduring power of love. Chung eloquently outlines not just the devastating effects of grief, but also the ways in which her loss was exacerbated by structural shortcomings, including the serious limitations of the U.S. health care system and the injustice of economic inequality. Despite the sobering subject matter, Chung—who chronicled the challenges of her transracial adoption in her first memoir All You Can Ever Know with deep empathy—channels the same care and compassion in her latest work.” —Cady Lang, Time

“[A Living Remedy] stands to spark a major and essential conversation … Chung excels at excavating both the personal and the systemic.” —Literary Hub

“One of this generation’s great chroniclers of family, both adoptive and biological: its limits and possibilities, what it means, how it shapes us.” —The Millions

“As Chung immerses readers in her experience of grief, her powerful words compel us to follow her on a beautiful but difficult journey of loss … She gives these hard times a purpose, absorbing them with both fury and compassion, making them part of her own legacy to pass along.” —BookPage (starred review)

“This fiery book combines a chronicle of the grief of losing one’s parents and a searing indictment of the unequal health care system that led to their early deaths.” —Marion Winik, People

“Searing … a poignant book that’s sure to resonate widely.” —Parade

“This riveting and tender memoir is a stunning meditation on grief and guilt, driven by the ways in which the U.S. healthcare system, one of the highest costs of healthcare in the world, fails those that cannot afford it … Chung illuminates the hardships many Americans face caring for aging parents and loved ones in a broken system.” —Lupita Aquino, Today.com

“Chung has knocked it out of the park with her second book.” —Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times

“[A] devastating, radiant memoir.” —R. O. Kwon, Electric Literature

“All of us who’ve experienced the devastating loss of a loved one can appreciate [Chung’s] eloquent words … reading [A Living Remedy] feels like a balm.” —Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times

“[Chung] explores…difficult emotional terrain, while also delivering a powerful social commentary that poses vital questions on access to medical care and the meaning of home and family … Though terminal illness and death — like the pandemic — are often described as pat ‘equalizers,’ Chung refuses to let society off that easily: ‘Sickness and grief throw wealthy and poor families alike into upheaval, but they do not transcend the gulfs between us, as some claim — if anything, they often magnify them. Who has the ability to make choices that others lack? Who is left to scramble for piecemeal solutions in an emergency?’ Chung knows the answer all too well, and her call to action is particularly powerful because of it.” —Qian Julie Wang, The Washington Post

“This elegant, fearless, aching memoir is a balm for all who grieve in this complicated time, joining Joan Didion in the pantheon of the literature of loss.” —Janet Somerville, Toronto Star

“Chung writes about and through her grief with clarity and wisdom. Her reflection on her early life and her parents’ last days is a salve for any reader who has experienced the specific devastation that is losing a parent.” —Harper’s Bazaar

“[Chung’s] narrative…tackles death and grief in all its myriad forms, but it also provides an incisive indictment of the U.S. healthcare system, and the ways it fails those living in economic insecurity…. Beautifully written, A Living Remedy faces loss in all its heartrending shades, but mingling in every dark moment is the light and love of family.” —Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“Chung writes with incredible grace and tenderness about grief, class, health care inequality, and familial separation during COVID … Chung’s openness, intimacy, and willingness to write her grief onto the page is truly extraordinary. She also has an incredible gift for connection and for illuminating not only her experiences, but how those experiences are a part of a larger, devastating story about America. This is a must-read book made up of anger, loss, and healing.” —Book Riot

“What makes A Living Remedy so compelling is Chung’s ability to merge the political with the deeply personal in a narrative that’s consistently relatable … It’s a testament to Chung’s talent that she can bravely and honestly put into words what I and so many others can’t.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Chung’s prose hones her grief into razor-sharp insights even as her words interrogate, honor, and celebrate the unbreakable bonds of parenthood.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Beautiful and thought-provoking … Chung explores great depths of grief and rage as she takes a hard look at the pervasive inequality in American society and what community really means.” —Good Housekeeping

“[A] delicate, painful, magnificent book.” —ELLE

“This open-hearted, unflinching account will be a boon to others.” —Kirkus

“Chung … blazes a trail through a complicated social system in A Living Remedy, searching for equity against an unjust landscape of rich and poor in the United States.” —The Rumpus

“A heartrending, poignant memoir that serves as not only a worthy follow-up to All You Can Ever Know but also as a beacon of hope and recognition for readers who find themselves (or their loved ones) suffering similar circumstances … Beautifully written in [Chung’s] telltale lyrical style, A Living Remedy is an unforgettable read.” —Shondaland

“A stirring meditation on grief, loss, and community.” —Teen Vogue

“Powerfully rendered scenes illuminate this quiet polemic against a dysfunctional healthcare system, hidden poverty, and racism … There’s great emotional power here.” —Publishers Weekly

“Chung writes with empathy and righteous rage about the most painful of subjects.” —Bustle

“[A] visceral and wrenching memoir.” —Esquire

“Chung channels her fury into writing this book, and by doing so, extends a loving hand—and heart—to those of us reeling from loss, especially when that loss is compounded by systemic inequality.” —StyleCaster

“[A] tenderly crafted, powerfully deployed memoir overflowing with heart and humor.” —Electric Literature

“[T]his book is going to be such a comfort for all of us who have experienced loss in the last few years, to see clearly that we’re not alone. A beautiful book.” —Emma Straub (in her newsletter)

“A Living Remedy is a profoundly moving account of one daughter’s love for her white adoptive parents and a damning indictment of the healthcare system that failed them. Nicole Chung writes with nuance and empathy about what it means to be ill and economically insecure in America today. She transforms her rage and anguish into luminous prose on the page, and the result is one of the most devastating portraits of a daughter’s grief I have ever read.” —Julie Otsuka, author of The Swimmers

“Like the best memoirs, Nicole Chung’s A Living Remedy is both an excavation of the self and the people who sustain it—but also, at its core, a work of art undergirded by a tender, forgiving, and awe-filled gaze at what it means to live and hurt in the human world. The result is a bone-deep enactment of love in all its valences.” —Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

“A Living Remedy is a book about love, loss, leaving home, and finding home. Nicole Chung has a rare precious gift: the ability to tell an intimate story with vast social implications. It is a book that honors the way families are made through a collage of close encounters and shared struggles. Brimming with insight about class, race, identity, and politics, A Living Remedy is tender and observant rather than dogmatic. It will move and transform readers with its beauty, spirituality, and wisdom.” —Imani Perry, author of South to America

“This astounding and immensely moving memoir is a gift. It is a chance to think about family, mortality, love, and grief. It is a chance to confront the broken healthcare system we live within. From the most intimate to the most public, A Living Remedy holds gem-like questions about all that matters.” —Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning

“An unforgettable, transformative read. Nicole Chung shows the deep pits of grief and the messy reality of life after loss, revealing pain, financial insecurity, and the failures of our country’s healthcare system with tender lucidity. This is a profound memoir that haunted and nourished me. I cried. I ached. I saw a path forward.” —Crystal Hana Kim, author of If You Leave Me

“A Living Remedy is a bouquet of feeling—Nicole Chung weaves a groundbreaking narrative steeped in love, humor, the infinitude of memory, and the essentiality of community. Chung approaches the kaleidoscope of grief from its many angles, excavating its complexity with heart and candor; but Chung’s prose also soothes, uncovering hidden corners of the heart and its many permutations. A Living Remedy is elegiac and heart-expanding, a memoir that’s both an exploration of loss and a beacon for moving forward. We couldn’t be luckier to have this gift of a book.” —Bryan Washington, author of Memorial

From the bestselling author of All You Can Ever Know comes a searing memoir of family, class, and grief—a daughter’s search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the lives she’s lost.

Nicole Chung couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she’d long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in – where there are big homes, college funds, nice vacations – looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew up in, where paychecks have to stretch to the end of the week, health insurance is often lacking, and there are no safety nets.

When her father dies at only sixty-seven, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of precarity and lack of access to healthcare contributed to his early death. And then the unthinkable happens – less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as Covid descends upon the world.

Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another – and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and grievous inequalities in American society.

Selected Interviews

NPR Morning Edition with Steve Inskeep | MSNBC American Voices with Alicia Menendez | KQED Forum | OPB Think Out Loud | WBEZ Reset | Seattle Times | Boston Globe | San Francisco Chronicle | Literary Hub | Electric Literature | Teen Vogue | USA TODAY Book Club