- Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha. Faber. $29.99.
In 1991, a young African-American girl in LA is shot in cold blood in a grocery store. Her attacker goes free, causing backlash and riots from her grieving community. Almost 30 years later, a middle-aged Korean-American woman is shot outside the pharmacy she owns, in front of her daughter.
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These two shootings are connected, though to Grace Park, her mother Yvonne's attack must be the result of a crazed gunman, a random act of violence. Unbeknownst to her, Yvonne has been hiding a dark secret since before Grace was born, a secret that is at the heart of the feud between her and her other daughter, Miriam, and that has been carried by the entire community for decades.
Your House Will Pay pulls together two narrative strands to form a compelling, suspenseful story that explores the intersection of race, violence and justice, and asks poignant questions about how multiculturalism and racism can involve lateral violence between marginalised communities.
Grace is a young pharmacist, and it is her interpretation of events that drives one side of this narrative, as she grapples with the broken relationships in her family, and is then thrown into shock by revelations about her mother's past.
Concurrently, Shawn Matthews, the brother of Ava Matthews who was shot at the age of 16 on suspicion of trying to shoplift a carton of milk, has grown up in the aftermath of the tragedy that ripped apart his community. After Ava's death, Shawn joined a gang and found himself in trouble with the law. Now in his forties, he is trying to build a normal life with a respectable job and a partner and child. Instead, the sudden shooting of his sister's killer creates shockwaves that ripple through every aspect of his life.
Steph Cha has created a masterpiece with Your House Will Pay, one that looks at the complex scenario of a real life event from the 90s through an empathetic fictional lens, allowing space for the reader to ask the question - how social discrimination and prejudice creates a breeding ground for hate crimes and acts of violence.
No character in this book is straightforward - every single person is complicated morally, and represents the unique impacts that violent crimes can have on people tangentially related to the victim and perpetrator.
Whilst this book raises a lot of questions, Cha does not try and force any answers. Instead, she asks the reader to suspend their own preconceptions and try to inhabit the shoes of another. Instead of grandstanding or forcing any particular viewpoint, Your House Will Pay creates a vivid narrative that will stay with the reader for days.
- Zoya Patel is a Canberra writer.
