Coin for a Dream: And other Korean Tales
Author Mae Adams' latest book is a fascinating assembly of intriguing tales full of colorful characters such as monks and shamans, kings and queens, ginseng boys, grateful ghosts and magpies, and a host of others to entertain you and experience the wonders of ancient rites and cultures of Korea. While reading it, you will hear lepers sing for their supper, watch goblins wrestle, feel a tiger's sorrow, taste snake soup, and touch a Taoist Immortal God's hand. It will take your mind on an emotional roller coaster ride from grief to joy, tears to laughter.
Adams enchants readers with conversational stories with unexpected twists and turns from her perspective as a young girl, collecting tidbits and folklore from her grandparents and her life story. The myths, legends, and folk tales also have great importance and give us moral lessons we can apply in our times.
BEST DEALS
About the Author
Mae Adams was born in Korea in 1933 as the useless second daughter of an Aristocratic Family, and her mother rejected her for not being a son. But her grandparents raised her in a mountain village, where the family retreated upon the Japanese invasion of 1910. Mae's grandma gave her a pair of magic silver chopsticks to protect her life from poison and other physical harm. When Mae's father suffered from tuberculosis in Seoul, his family came to live with her Grandparents and Mae, but Mae's relationship with her mother was stormy, and her father ignored her until his death when Mae was five and a half years old.
Mae went to a Japanese school, and after World War II, the family escaped from the Communist regime that had taken over Mae's hometown and came after the family's blood. Her grandma stayed behind to give the family time to escape. In the wake of the harrowing escape from North Korea, the family lived in Seoul as refugees, but hard luck kept following their path. From 1950 to 1953, the family lived through the traumatic Korean War and lost what they had rebuilt. But Mae fought back, became the family's breadwinner, and dreamed of going to America for a college education. Although she fell in love with an American Marine, Colonel Hewitt Adams, she went her way to pursue her education.
Following the three years of long-distance romance, she married Hewitt and raised a family. Hewitt retired from the Marine Corps, went back to school, got his degree, and became a professor at Clemson University teaching Asian and American history. Mae, fluent in four languages, taught him Chinese, which was a required course. Hewitt wanted to write Mae's life story upon his second retirement, but his many ailments prevented him from it. He lost the battle with cancer after 43 years together, and while grieving, Mae wrote her memoir as therapy and eventually wrote Precious Silver Chopsticks for publication. Her second book is Coin for a Dream, and the third book is The Letters/A Lifetime Foreign Affair. She had accomplished her lifelong dream of becoming an author at the age of 84.