Miracle Creek by Angie Kim is a great legal thriller that I saw recommended by the New York Times. The legal aspects have to do with hyperbaric oxygen therapy, referred to as HBOT, for various medical conditions. It is an approved treatment and is offered in classic medical settings, but as happens with so many medical discoveries, it is also used for off-label conditions and is available in non-medical settings. The author writes about the controversy surrounding that treatment. Because of the use of oxygen, it is a highly flammable situation, and in the course of the novel, an arsonist lit a fire when there were six people in the “submarine”, two of whom died and the rest were injured. The plot had to do with who lit the fire. The patients/clients who were in the machine were of very different ancestries.
Mixed in with the HBOT controversy and tragedy were very meaningful stories about Korean immigrants. The owners of the HBOT device, the “Miracle Submarine, were Korean immigrants, and the author who was also a Korean immigrant, wrote about all aspects of the difficulties that were inherent in that migration effort.
This book grabbed me from the beginning and it gets my strong recommendation.
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