“When none of us can travel, there’s something pretty nice about reading a book that takes place in another country. See depicts this world in vivid, sensuous detail, including the foods eaten by villagers, the songs sung by the divers and the rites by a female shaman who channels the voices of the dead. In “The Island of Sea Women,” she explores a unique culture where women go to the sea daily while men stay home to care for children. See notes that historical fiction offers readers an opportunity to escape from their real-life troubles and immerse themselves in possibly unfamiliar worlds. But now, with the pandemic, we’re living in a moment of uncertainty too.” “We’re so lucky as a country that in our lifetimes we’ve never had a war on our soil. “The people on the island of Jeju, and in Korea in general, really went through just a lot,” See says.

Since the pandemic, however, the novel’s newer fans have focused more on the psychological resilience, courage and persistence that the women needed to survive in a tumultuous era that includes 1930s Japanese occupation, World War II, and violent repression by South Korea’s regime in the late 1940s and early 1950s. When the book was published in 2019, See recalls that audiences at book events asked about the divers’ astonishing endurance and physical daring. She says “The Island of Sea Women” has taken on a different meaning for many readers as the result of the COVID-19 pandemic and other recent events. Since then she’s written a string of historical novels that focus on the experiences and struggles of Asian women.

The daughter of author and writing teacher Carolyn See, Lisa See burst onto the literary scene in 1995 with “On Gold Mountain,” a nonfiction account of the Chinese immigrant side of her family and her great-grandfather’s rise to become a celebrated figure in Los Angeles’ Chinatown.

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See