Mary Lynn Bracht

Walking through Paddington Cemetery this image of trees in very different stages of life reminded me of Shel Silverstein’s story, The Giving Tree. Whenever I read that story I believed the tree was the boy’s mother, who sacrificed everything she had, even her body, to help him survive. As a girl I despised the boy for being so greedy and inept that he needed her to sacrifice herself. Now I look back on that story with fondness because it explains so much about the human relationship with everything, from our environment to politics to family. It’s a mirror that reminds us how much we take from this world and from one another without giving back. I read it now as both a warning and a comfort, in that I can choose to take less than that boy even though the gifts are freely offered because their acceptance could lead to the ruin of us both. Caring for that which sustains us is a privilege, and we should follow a path where we all flourish.

The lovely team at Longanesi behind the publication of Figlie del Mare and the fabulous booksellers at Hoepli Bookstore in Milan welcomed me and my debut novel to Italy last week. Many thanks to Paulo Noseda, translator extraordinaire, who made it possible for me to understand everyone, and to the many journalists, book bloggers and photographers who came to meet and interview me about my novel.

I’m so hopeful Italian readers will fall in love with haenyeo divers Hana and Emi and take to heart the plight of the women history knows as ‘comfort women’. There are only 28 survivors left in South Korea. These women deserve a place in history’s memory.

Click to watch the book trailer here: Figlie del Mare YouTube