This spellbinding story of an orphaned girl, a young GI, and a missionary whose lives collide at a Korean orphanage weaves a profound meditation on heroism, sacrifice, and love, and possibilities for mercy, salvation, and surrendering self to others.
I'll start with the story: I liked it. I was really interested to see who the characters were, where they came from, and how they got to where they were. It was hard to follow at first. It opens up with the main character, June, on top of a train with her two siblings. Then there is a flashback, then the story progresses, then another flashback, then we go to another character and they have flashbacks, then their story progresses, then you see how the first two characters are intertwined, etc, etc, etc. If I put the book down for too long (which happened once or twice, it is several hundred pages long - like over 800) I couldn't immediately remember whose story I was reading so I'd have to go back a few pages to catch up.
I was pretty annoyed with all the moving around at first but once I got into it there was allusion to a certain event and I got to the point were I was seeing what led up to the event and what happened after the event and I got pretty anxious to know what the event actually was. Turns out this event was the climax and once I got there I was glad that I already knew what happened after the event because if everything had been chronological, the last half of the book would have been a bit boring.
Side note: books like this make me wish that literature came with a warning label or a rating systems like movies. There is a lot of sex in this book. Honestly, if I had known how much sex was in the story, I probably wouldn't have chosen to read it. Sometimes a steamy scene can be interesting and add to the story but there was just so much that it got to the point were I was thinking "Ok, I get it, they're getting it on. Can we move on already!" Anyway, just be aware of that if you decide to read The Surrendered.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. It was a little long, a little difficult to figure out the flashbacks, and had a little too much sex but pretty good.
