by Jung Yun
Elinor leans down toward the man, who appears more confused than frightened at first. It’s only when she’s hovering directly above him that his watery red eyes seem to focus and he actually sees her.
“I know what you did to me,” she says.
He remains still for a few seconds. A thin line of sweat trickles down his cheek. Then he bucks and wrests an arm free, taking a wild swing at the air that catches one of the bouncers on the shoulder. It’s not the bouncer, or his partner, or even Fat Mike who puts him back in his place. It’s Aaron. Skinny, scrawny Aaron who seemed so annoyed with her not that long ago. Someone taught him to fight, or maybe he was forced to learn, because suddenly a light turns on inside him and he’s beating the man like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.
45
In the fourth grade, everyone in Elinor’s social studies class had to do a poster presentation about one of the US presidents. Before the teacher had even finished explaining the project, Elinor shot her hand in the air—something she rarely did at school—and asked if she could choose Teddy Roosevelt. Twice that summer, her family had visited places where his presence loomed large—first at the national park named in his honor and later at Mount Rushmore. She returned home to Marlow fascinated by the idea of him, how he’d been so many different things during his lifetime. A cattle rancher, a war hero, an explorer, a lawman, a naval officer, a governor, a president.
Elinor put more work into that poster than any other assignment she’d ever done for school. Using the photos and souvenirs she’d collected on her trip, she filled every available inch with details about Roosevelt’s life and career. On one side, she pasted several images that she’d cut out of a brochure about his rise to the presidency. On the other, she enlisted Maren’s help drawing a faux scroll on which she wrote the highlights of his accomplishments in office—the Panama Canal, the conservation of national parkland, trustbusting, the Square Deal. Around the edges, she carefully glued all the pine needles, rocks, and flakes of gold- and rust-colored earth that she’d secreted away from the national park in her pockets, despite her father telling her not to.
The teacher praised Elinor’s uncharacteristic dedication to this project. Her only criticism was how the middle of the poster—the largest section by far, decorated with a construction-paper frame and multicolored confetti—could have been put to better use. Instead of featuring an oversized photograph of Elinor’s family, the one taken under the four presidents at Mount Rushmore, she said it should have focused more on Roosevelt. Normally, criticism of any kind would have wounded Elinor. It was the reason why she rarely spoke up in class to begin with. But she didn’t particularly care what her teacher thought about the photo. Her family looked like a family in it. Showing it off to her classmates had been her only motivation.
Decades later, Elinor enrolled in a class on nineteenth- and twentieth-century US history to fulfill a degree requirement. Thirty-eight was an embarrassing age to be what was essentially a college junior. It was also an embarrassing age to learn that she’d internalized a memory of Roosevelt that was little more than a child’s rendering of him, whitewashed to the point of myth. There was no denying that he’d been and done all the things she remembered. Even the hypermasculine, tall tale–like stories about chasing boat thieves downriver and getting into a bar brawl to defend his honor were true. But there was a darker side to him that she’d never read about in any museum or book. She didn’t, for example, know that one of the things that had led him west from New York to the Badlands was a profound sense of grief for his mother and wife, both of whom had curiously died on the same day, the former of typhoid and the latter due to complications from childbirth. She also didn’t know that he’d left his infant daughter in his sister’s care for several years, unable to be a parent to the child arguably responsible for his wife’s death. And to her great shame, she didn’t know that despite Roosevelt’s love for the western territories that would eventually become part of the United States, his attitudes toward the indigenous people to whom these lands belonged could only be described in modern-day terms as genocidal.
The sun is slowly rising over the national park now, casting thin splinters of light across the dark horizon. Soon, caravans filled with tourists will take over the scenic inner loops to admire the park’s views and take photos of deer and bison ambling across the road. At the visitor’s center just off the interstate, Elinor sits in her car and waits, thinking through the events of the past few hours.
After the Depot closed, she stayed behind with Dani and Michelle, unnerved by how quiet and empty it was, this place that she’d come to associate with noise. Michelle lined up three shot glasses on the bar and poured, not bothering to ask if anyone wanted a drink or what they’d like to have. Elinor appreciated how neither she nor Dani pressed her for details about the man or what he’d done to her on the plane. Instead, the three of them simply raised their glasses to one another, each privately toasting something that they chose not to say out loud. Although Elinor was still in a state of shock, she recognized something unexpectedly tender about this moment, a sense of connection that she rarely felt with people. Dani had defended her. Michelle had come to her aid. Even Aaron and Fat Mike had tried to help her in their own misguided way. Noticeably, the two of them didn’t return after carrying the man outside, leaving Elinor to wonder what they’d done to him. The idea of causing the man pain didn’t give her any particular sense of satisfaction. She knew enough not to confuse vengeance with power or justice, or even principle. She also knew that an uncomfortable reckoning lay in store for her, allowing men to use violence on her behalf as a remedy for the violence that another man had inflicted.
Before parting ways, Michelle offered her a place to crash for the night, which Elinor gratefully declined. She wanted to take a drive.
“Are you serious? You want to drive now?”
Dani shook her head. “It’s three in the morning. Where would you even go?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, even though she was. Since the day she first arrived, she knew that she’d eventually return to this place.
Maybe they understood her need to get some air and be out in the open, or maybe they saw the look on her face and realized she wasn’t going to stay. Whatever the reason, they didn’t try to dissuade her.
The visitor’s center off Exit 32 overlooks the Painted Canyon, a huge expanse at the park’s southeastern edge. Such an alien landscape—Roosevelt said so himself in his writings—formed by layers of sediment and ash. As the sun continues to rise, the canyon comes to life with morning color. Inch by inch, shades of rust, gold, pink, brown, and green begin to illuminate and ignite. Elinor tracks the sun’s movement, reminding herself on occasion to breathe. When it finally breaks from the horizon, blaze orange against the cloudless sky, it’s all fire and awe. The most perfect sight she has ever seen. The most perfect sight Roosevelt ever saw. How strange that this place she loves most in her home state is named after him, a man who did so much good for people and yet believed in the supremacy of white Europeans above all others. It’s hard to reconcile how these truths can even occupy the same plane. That’s probably why this land means so much to her. It’s a reminder of how complicated this country is, how great beauty and terrible ugliness have coexisted here from the start.
Elinor’s eyes flutter closed as the sun shines brightly on her face. Somewhere in that weightless stage between exhaustion and sleep, she begins to tells herself a story. It comes to her in fragments—small, splintered ones that eventually come together to form a whole. The story is about a woman who lived in a beautiful place but never felt like she belonged there. Once upon a time, this woman was loved—by a man, by a family. And maybe she loved them too until she no longer could, because that love came at the expense of things that made her who she was. When a door to another world cracked open, she seized her moment and charged through, not thinking about what her absence would do to the people she left behind. Maybe this woman regretted wha
t she’d done later. Maybe she didn’t. But by then, it hardly mattered. What was passed was past. There was no fixing all that she’d broken, even if she wanted to. Wherever this woman landed, she had to start over, because isn’t that what you do when the story you’ve written isn’t what you hoped for or planned? You start over. That’s what Nami did. That’s what Elinor did. And if she allows herself to abandon her senses and imagine a different ending, maybe that’s what Leanne Lowell did too.
This is the answer to her question, the one she asked Richard before they parted ways for good. All this time, Nami and Leanne have been leading her to a different story, one that she wasn’t able to see at first. It’s not about the women who arrive in this hard and unforgiving place, looking for something better. It’s about the ones who were always here and chose to stay.
Elinor isn’t certain if she’s dreaming or planning now, or whether there’s even a difference, but she sees the road ahead so clearly. It winds through golden grasslands and small, sleepy towns, past tired farms and fields filled with pumpjacks nodding at the earth. It takes her through the vast reservation she never saw clearly as a child and deposits her in front of the trailer with the stripe around its middle. When she knocks on the door, Shawnalee will open it as she did before, pausing at the sight of her.
Maybe, she hopes, this is where things will begin again.
Acknowledgments
In February 2020, my agent, Jen Gates, arranged a phone call between me and Anna deVries of St. Martin’s Press. I remember very little about that conversation except the thing that mattered most—the excitement of knowing with each passing minute that Anna was the right person to edit O Beautiful. It’s hard to believe that the two of us still haven’t met in person because of the pandemic, and yet her imprint on this novel has been profound. If you’re an aspiring writer, I hope you’ll one day be able to work with an editor who sees you on the page as clearly as she saw me—someone who knows what you’re trying to achieve and supports that vision with grace, good judgment, and encouragement. My sincere thanks to Anna, Alex Brown, Jennifer Fernandez, Brant Janeway, Beatrice Jason, Young Jin Lim, Martha Schwartz, Rima Weinberg, Dori Weintraub, and all of their colleagues at St. Martin’s for bringing this book into the world with such care and professionalism during a period of time when the world often felt so uncertain.
To my husband, Joel: I always tell you that I can’t do this work without you, and you—being the person you are—always tell me that I can. Let’s continue disagreeing about this for the rest of our lives. In the meantime, thank you for being the first to read these pages, for reading them over and over again whenever I asked, and for telling me to keep going when I wanted to walk away and write something easier. You are the very best person I will ever love. To both of our families—siblings, in-laws, pride-of-my-heart nephews—a book like this requires spending a lot of time in darkness, so I’m grateful to all of you for being such a bright and constant source of light. And to my parents, Moo Yong and Young Ja Yun, without whose intrepidness this book would not exist: Mom and Dad, thank you for being so brave when you decided to come to America all those years ago. Your fierce determination to give your children a better life never fails to humble, astonish, and inspire me.
To my Baltimore writing group, Molly Englund and Jeannie Vanasco: thank you for reading the early pages of this book long before they were ready for your eyes. Our conversations as women writers living through a truly dystopic time in American history influenced me in countless ways over the years, and your friendship has helped Baltimore feel like home. I also want to thank my online writing group—Hannah Bae, Jessie Chaffee, Krys Lee, and Julia Phillips—for making Tuesday nights during the pandemic something to look forward to and for reminding me that the next story is always waiting to be told. Big thanks to Boomer Pinches, friend and reader extraordinaire, who provided such helpful and timely feedback on this manuscript, and to Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson and Jia Tolentino, who were so gracious in helping me understand how their writing world differs from my own.
To my wonderful colleagues in the English department at the George Washington University: not all pre-tenure faculty receive the time or space to actually do the work that earns them tenure. How lucky I am—not only that you chose to hire me but that you also provided the conditions that have allowed me to create and thrive. Much gratitude to all of you, as well as to the university at large and the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences for awarding me substantial grants and resources during my pre-tenure years. This book is truly the product of my time at GW and the investments this entire community has made in me. A very special thanks to my students, past and present. Whenever I see your kindness and empathy in class and on the page, I think the future is going to be alright; one day, it’s going to be in your good and capable hands.
To the following organizations, thank you for honoring me with generous grants to fund the research and writing of this book: the Maryland State Arts Council, the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Our communities are truly better places to live and work because of your recognition that art matters. I am also indebted to the Ucross Foundation, MacDowell, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the National Humanities Center for the invaluable gifts of time and space in which to write, and for introducing me to such wonderful cohorts of fellow artists. Also, special thanks to Melissa Girard, Jason Massey, and dearly departed Cutty the Cat, not only for the gift of your friendship, but for twice lending me your home so I could quietly revise.
Finally, let me return full circle to my agent, with whom these acknowledgments began. In December 2017, Jen and I met to discuss an earlier version of O Beautiful, which had arrived at an unexpected crossroads. Jen, thank you for listening with such an open mind that day and for encouraging me to write the story that only I could tell. I am grateful to you and your dedicated colleagues at Aevitas Creative Management for always being there when I need you most.
To all the people mentioned here and anyone I may have inadvertently left out, I look forward to hugging you, or at least seeing you, in real life one of these days. Until then, heartfelt thanks for helping me bring this book into the light.
Also by Jung Yun
Shelter
About the Author
Jung Yun was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Fargo, North Dakota. Her debut novel, Shelter, was long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and a semifinalist for Goodreads’ Best Fiction Award of 2016. Yun was a 2018 MacDowell fellow and her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Tin House, and other publications. She lives in Baltimore and serves as an assistant professor of English at the George Washington University. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
C
hapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Acknowledgments
Also by Jung Yun
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First published in the United States by St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group
O BEAUTIFUL. Copyright © 2021 by Jung Yun. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Young Jin Lim
Cover art: landscape painting © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images; house © Images of Our Lives/The Image Bank/Getty Images; oil pumps © Jules2000/Shutterstock.com