Book Review: She is Mine by Stephanie Fast

Written in the third person, Stephanie Fast’s She is Mine reads like a novel. Written in three parts, it unfolds like a play.

It’s the story of the daughter of a Korean woman and an American serviceman. She never knew her father – he didn’t know her mother was pregnant. She was rejected by her mother’s family, said to have brought dishonor on her family. She was abandoned by her mother.

Five year old Yoon Myoung figures that if she travels along the railroad tracks – the railroad tracks that took her away from her mother – she’ll find her way back, back into her mother’s arms. So she walks the tracks, eating roots of grasses then insects and trapped animals. She steals. She is beaten and chased off. She is abused.

I couldn’t put this book down. The story was so compelling, so well-told. As I turned page after page on horror after horror, I almost forgot that this isn’t a story Fast invented. It’s a story she lived.

She is Mine reads like a novel, unfolds like a play – but it’s really an autobiography.

And while it’s the story of an abandoned child, of unspeakable horrors, it’s also the story of hope. It’s the story of a God who sees sparrows and war-orphans, who weeps when the sparrow falls from the sky and who rescues orphans from pits. It’s the story of a God who sees the outcast and declares “She is Mine”.

She is Mine is told in the third person because, the author tells us: “While this is the story of my life, it differs only in cultural details from the stories of the innumerable nameless and faceless orphans around the world today.”

Reading She is Mine pierced my heart. It undid me. I cried practically from the first page to the last.

I cried because life is precious. People are important. Yet there is so much pain, so much injustice, so much horror in the world. She is Mine didn’t shrink back from sharing that pain, that injustice, that horror.

I might have been tempted to close the book. You may be tempted to not pick it up. We don’t like to see pain, injustice, horror. We like happy tears, not anguished ones. We like to read of the human spirit conquering, not being crushed.

But the pain, the injustice, the horror is not reason to close our eyes, to close the book, to tune out the voices of need.

Jesus didn’t. He saw the pain, the injustice, the horror. And he stepped down into it. He bowed under the yoke, was beaten and defiled. Why? So He could lift us, His people, out.

And He calls His people to do the same.

It would be easier to shut our eyes to the plight of the orphan, to busy ourselves with little petty things. But it is not the way God calls His church to live.

If you will let it, Stephanie Fast’s She is Mine could be a tool God uses to open your eyes to the pain of this world, could be a tool God uses to compel you to step into that pain, could be a tool God uses to lift another out.

Will you read this book? Will you let your heart be moved? Will you let your reading compel you to ask God what you can do? Will you listen and obey when He speaks?

I pray that you will.

---

Rating: 5 stars
Category: Autobiography
Synopsis: The story of a Korean war-orphan, abandoned, abused, and ultimately accepted.
Recommendation: Everyone should read this book.

---

I received this book from the author thanks to Carrie’s generosity and passion for this story. All opinions are my own – including the opinion that you should head to Amazon (I don’t get anything from them) and order this book right away.