Behind Five Willows

Behind Five Willows

Author: June Hur Listening Length: 8h 35m

From the New York Times-bestselling author of A Crane Among Wolves comes a warm and romantic homage to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice set in historical Korea, about a reader and a writer who secretly fight against government book banning and find themselves irresistibly drawn together. As the dutiful second-eldest ...

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Chapter 1

The countryside had exploded in a storm of colors—shimmering willow tresses, golden shoots of forsythia and bursts of flowering sansuyu trees, and purple-pink azaleas smothering the hillsides and valleys.

Warm gusts breezed through the village, showering petals onto thatched rooftops and earthenware pots, drifting down withered streams and speckling the parched earth.

Drawing her veil over her head, Shin Haewon journeyed through the floral downpour, pausing now and then to turn her eyes skyward.

A bird glided along the mountain ridges, and she found herself wondering how she must appear from such a height: a young woman walking alone, her jangot billowing like the wings of a silken green butterfly.