Summary

“Day 1: 2008” opens with Young-Sook, an old woman on the island of Jeju, an island south of Korea, picking through algae by the water, when a tourist family approaches her and show her a photo of a young woman in a bathing suit. The foreign woman, Janet, asks Young-Sook if she recognizes the woman in the picture, but Young-Sook says she does not.

In the next section, “Swallowing Water Breath, April 1938,” the narrative shifts to a first person narrator, whom the reader later discovers is Young-sook. Young-Sook is beginning her first day of training to become a haenyeo, a member of one of the diving collectives on the island of Jeju. She walks with her mother, Sun-sil, to the water when they meet Mi-ja, another girl Young-sook’s age. Arriving at the water, Sun-sil and the...