Hyeon heads over to the crime scene upon hearing what happened, looks at the bodies, and then discovers her mentor is being blamed for the murder. What happens next is out of a horror: four women, three nurses and students at the Hyeminseo, and the other a woman of the court, are violently murdered outside of the nursing school. The two of them are summoned to the Crown Prince’s quarters one night, where Hyegyong, his wife, reveals he has gone off into the night. After being educated at the Hyeminseo, where women learn how to take care of other’s health, she ends up working at the palace with her friend Ji-eun. Because of the nature of that relationship, her father does not see her as an equal, and a large portion of the novel is lowkey spent exploring how she wanted to earn her father’s respect and honor through her duties. Our main character is Hyeon, the illegitimate daughter of the Minister of Security and a commoner. The year is 1758 in this novel, at the height of Joseon Korea. It was a truly tragic time to be in the imperial family at that time, and Sado’s death was unfortunate, although not directly mentioned in the novel.Ī palace nurse in the Joseon dynasty gets caught up in a murder investigation and some romance. However, if someone can handle the prose Lady Hyegyong writes in her autobiography, it is definitely worth checking out after this novel. Although there were historical things and tidbits to remember, I found it fairly accessible even if someone was not as familiar with Korean history and culture in this moment of time. The writing was just so good in this one, and I felt immersed completely in the world that Hur created. I finished it in less than two hours, which is a feat considering I had an OverDrive copy checked out from my local library. Imagine my surprise when I checked this book out on a whim and discovered that it was set in that exact moment in Joseon imperial history, and the same people I had been reading about were suddenly characters. The other week before picking this book up I actually finished the autobiography Hyegyong, who was the wife of Crown Prince Sado. Having lived in Korea for a bit on a scholarship and experienced seeing some of the extensive historical monuments that are within the city of Seoul alone, I’ve managed to foster this lifelong devotion to learning about the country and its history. For the past semester as a humanities graduate student, I have been conducting research on Colonial Korea.
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