Marie Myung-Ok Lee

Seventeen-year-old Ellen Sung just wants to be like everyone else at her all-white school. But hers is the only Korean American family in town, and her classmates in Arkin, Minnesota, will never let her forget that she's different. At the start of senior year, Ellen finds herself falling for Tomper Sandel, a football player who is popular and blond and undeniably cute... and to her surprise, he falls for her, too. Now Ellen has a chance at a life...

Adopted and raised by Scandinavian-American parents in Minnesota, a Korean teenager returns to her native country to find her mother.