While I was writing my novel, STONE ANGELS, it became painfully clear that I had no idea how to write a love story. Sure, it was an homage to PERSUASION by Jane Austen. And yes, I’d been addicted to those Harlequin romances sold at Woolworth’s for 99 cents when I was a teenager, not to mention Regency romances by Barbara Cartland with titles like “The Ruthless Rake” and “The Elusive Earl.” But my novel was not that.
I like to describe STONE ANGELS as “a sort of PACHINKO meets PERSUASION.” It has elements of both - generations of Koreans in the diaspora living under the shadow cast by Japanese colonialism combined with a love story about second chances. I knew how to write about migration and identity, and I’d extensively researched a little-known corner of WWII history about teenage girls forced into sexual slavery. But I had no idea how to write a love story.
In somewhat overly dramatic despair, I turned to PERSUASION. Austen scholars believe she wrote it when she was forty, not the seventeen-year-old who probably wrote the first draft of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, not a young woman in the bloom of youth. Yet PERSUASION is the least inhibited, most wildly romantic of her novels. Austen was at the height of her powers as a novelist when she completed PERSUASION - a title her sister, Cassandra, came up with, not Austen, because it was published posthumously. I wonder what she would have titled her novel. Titles are important to authors. Would she have called it Anne and Frederick? Love at Kellynch Hall? Finding Captain Wentworth?
I read PERSUASION for the first time when I was twenty. I was in my third year of college and still under the delusion that I would recognize my beloved when I saw him. I imagined our eyes would meet across a crowded room, and we’d know. Instantly. Such is the legacy of reading too many Harlequin romance novels when you’re fifteen. That quintessentially swoon-worthy moment never happened to me, which is why I created it for one of my characters in my novel.
For years, I fantasized that I’d write a version of PERSUASION and call it Regret and Redemption. I thought I’d hew closely to all the characters and their original plot lines, except I’d make them Korean American, like me. But there were so many good Austen revivals, and I lost confidence. Instead, I chose to cherry pick those elements of PERSUASION I loved most and incorporated them into my novel. A nod to Austen, not a revision. Sir Walter Elliot is one of the most comedically brilliant characters created by Austen - a vain and narcissistic man, a terrible husband and father. I practically had no choice but to base my character Minsu on Sir Walter. Also, I had to bestow upon my central character, Angelina Lee, siblings who are selfish and thoughtless, like Anne Elliot’s sisters. I mean, Elizabeth and Mary behave like wicked stepsisters, taking advantage of Anne’s good nature yet treating her contemptuously and carelessly.
I gave Angelina three difficult sisters, but I based those sisters on other Austen characters: Lucy Steele from SENSE & SENSIBILITY; Catherine Morland from NORTHANGER ABBEY; Lydia Bennet from PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Women who are sly; ordinary; selfish. Two dastardly characters in my novel are drawn from Mr. Elton of EMMA and Henry Crawford from MANSFIELD PARK. And I blatantly named one character EMMA, borrowing from the eponymous novel. I hope readers can spot the character who is essentially Colonel Brandon from SENSE & SENSIBILITY. I even inserted my own version of Fitzwilliam Darcy from PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Because who doesn’t want Darcy in a love story? Never mind, in real life too.
PERSUASION is a novel about second chances. In love. In life. Anne Elliot suffers from what I’ve always thought of as a “Korean girl problem,” a dutiful daughter syndrome. At the tender age of nineteen, she falls in love and accepts Frederick Wentworth’s proposal of marriage. Only to break off her engagement because she’s persuaded to do so by Lady Russell, a mother figure in the absence of her own mother who'd died when Anne was a child. Anne relinquishes the opportunity to lead her own life, make her own choices. Eight years later, Anne has lost her “bloom,” her youth, and her family is in constrained financial circumstances. Her father, a baronet, is forced to lease their ancestral home. And Wentworth returns as a wealthy British naval captain, no longer a poor sailor. He is angry with Anne and tries to deny his feelings but eventually realizes he’s still in love with her. In a famous letter, he writes some of the most romantic language in English literature: “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever…Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.”
In STONE ANGELS, I have my character Yoon, a fisherman from Jeju Island, say a few of those beautiful words to the love of his life because I wanted to create the same depth of emotion in my novel. And I went back to Wentworth’s words when I faced the conundrum of Angelina’s ending: “I must endeavour to subdue my mind to my fortune. I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve.”
By writing STONE ANGELS, I learned how to write a love story. Guided by Jane Austen, possibly the best romance author in history, I tried to write a genuine, nuanced love story with authentic characters who say and do unexpected things. I tried to copy Austen’s wit and humor in many scenes, tried to create characters who endure the sublime and the ridiculous, experience great joy and great sorrow. Because a love story is the very definition of life at the juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy.
In this "riveting [and] unforgettable" novel, a forty-year-old woman journeys to her cultural homeland—and uncovers a harrowing secret that makes her rethink everything she thought she knew about her mother (Jimin Han, author of The Apology).
Angelina Lee feels like she doesn’t belong. Newly divorced, and completely unmoored by the sudden and tragic death of her mother, she hopes studying Korean will reconnect her to her roots, but nothing about Seoul feels familiar. Further complicating matters is the resurgence of an alluring man from Angelina’s past, and fellow classmate Keisuke Ono, an irritatingly good looking Japanese American journalist who refuses to leave her alone. What she’ll barely admit, however, is the true reason behind her trip. She’s convinced the key to understanding her mother’s suicide lies in Korea.
A shocking conversation with an estranged relative proves her right. Her mother had an older sister, Sunyuh, who disappeared under the Japanese occupation of Korea during WWII—a secret the family buried for over sixty years. Horrified, Angelina can’t fathom why her mother never mentioned her, but knows, deep down, her mother’s fateful decision must be linked to Sunyuh. To find answers, Angelina embarks on a journey that takes her across oceans and continents, and challenges everything she believed about her heritage and herself.
Told through the bold, determined voices of three women, this poignant family drama explores love and loss, grief and healing, and the sometimes-difficult love that exists between mothers and daughters. It’s about the questions we wish we had asked lost relatives, the lives we could have lived had we made different choices, and, above all, second chances—to reinvent ourselves, to confront the sins of the past, and to find lasting love.
Women's Fiction [ Grand Central Publishing, On Sale: March 10, 2026, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781538765197 / eISBN: 9781538765203 ]
Helena Rho is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominated writer and the author of American Seoul: A Memoir. A former assistant professor of pediatrics, she has practiced and taught at top ten children's hospitals: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. She is a devoted fan of K-dramas, Korean green tea, and the haenyeo of Jeju Island.
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