Miracle Creek
Angie Kim's 2019 debut opens in a small Virginia town where a Korean immigrant family runs an experimental hyperbaric oxygen chamber called Miracle Submarine, used by parents of children with autism, cerebral palsy, and infertility issues. One night the chamber catches fire, and two people inside die, including an autistic boy whose mother is now on trial for his murder. Kim, who trained as a trial lawyer, structures the novel as a courtroom drama told from the rotating perspectives of the accused mother, the chamber's owner Pak Yoo, his wife and teenage daughter, a doctor, and other parents in the program. As the trial unfolds, every witness turns out to be lying about something, and the question is not so much who set the fire as which combination of small betrayals lit the fuse. The novel won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Miracle Creek
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A pressurized oxygen treatment chamber for autistic children explodes in rural Virginia, killing two. The novel works backward through the day, the families, and the trial of one of the mothers, accused of starting the fire.
Yes. Miracle Creek won the 2020 Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. It was Angie Kim's debut and an Amazon Best Book of the Year selection.
Yes. Miracle Creek is structured around a murder trial following a hyperbaric chamber explosion at an experimental autism therapy center. The novel uses the courtroom format to explore each character's truth from multiple angles.
Miracle Creek was written by Angie Kim, published in 2019 by Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Miracle Creek is 368 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Miracle Creek takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
Miracle Creek is a standalone novel by Angie Kim, not part of a series.
Miracle Creek is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.