“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. Absorbing, spare and sometimes terrifyingly close to the abyss, A Living Remedy shows us the power of resilience.” —The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

“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

“A powerful social commentary that poses vital questions on access to medical care and the meaning of home and family.” —Qian Julie Wang, The Washington Post

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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 so many others can’t.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“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’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)

“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)

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

“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

“This narrative investigates grief and unequal access to health care as much as it does the love that makes a family whole.” —The Boston Globe

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

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

“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] visceral and wrenching memoir.” —Esquire

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

“If [All You Can Ever Know] was a master class about finding family, A Living Remedy is about how to lose one. Taking clear-eyed aim at the minutiae of the American health care system … Ms. Chung lays out grief in its various forms … and charts the progression of grief across the country and through her immediate family.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Chung writes with incredible grace and tenderness … [her] 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

“[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 The Emperor of Gladness

“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 Guardian and a Thief

“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 The Stone Home

“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 Palaver

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. 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

CNN: All There Is with Anderson Cooper | NPR Morning Edition with Steve Inskeep | MSNBC American Voices with Alicia Menendez | KQED Forum | OPB Think Out Loud | Texas Public Radio | WBEZ Reset | Seattle Times | Boston Globe | San Francisco Chronicle | Literary Hub | Electric Literature | Culture Study | USA TODAY Book Club