"Life near the North Korean border is a zero-sum game, an ongoing battle in which you either win or you lose. This dangerous, shadowed netherworld is home to an unforgettable woman known only as the 'trickster'...throughout the course of these interconnected chapters she is a slave, an escape artist, a murderer, a terrorist, a spy, a lover, and a mother--a woman who must often choose the unthinkable to survive war and conquest in Korea"--,Provided by publisher.