Giving voice to the voiceless is the great unifier, reminding us not to equate the loudest voice with the only voice. A pantheon of contemporary literature is dedicated to the voices of shadow worlds, otherwise unseen by most of us. Drunks. Cheats. Prostitutes. Abusers. Fighters. The writers who do this best (Denis Johnson, Raymond Carver, Mary Gaitskill, Junot Diaz, to name a few) stray beneath the surface depravities to the deeper levels of hope and fear, where the best intentions are often crushed by circumstance. The premier writers accomplish this without the condescension of pop psychology or the peering judgment of the knowing elite; instead they employ empathy.

Nami Mun continues this literary tradition with her debut novel, Miles from Nowhere. Set in 1980s New York, the book follows Joon, the teenage daughter of Korean immigrants. After her mother’s breakdowns and her father’s abandonment of the family, Joon runs away from home and proceeds to live out her adolescence on the streets. She finds herself in myriad situations that are somewhat familiar to readers of so-called “edgy” fiction — drug addiction, involvement with ne’er-do-wells, stints in juvenile detention centers, etc. Similar to the protagonist in Denis Johnson’s seminal Jesus’ Son, Joon has a stronger moral grounding than those who surround her. Throughout much of the book, her intrinsic sense of purpose is in conflict with the reality of the world she finds herself in.

There is an inherent irony that the novel straddles: it takes on people traditionally outside the margins of society, yet that same group regularly populates contemporary literature. Hence, the shock of the situations in Miles from Nowhere can take on a certain de rigueur. That said, the book’s characters are strong enough to break through the familiar.

There is no doubt that Nami Mun can write. Her style is direct, with tight brushstrokes that bring out the expressiveness in the spaces between sentences. She has the sensibility of a short-story writer, diving into the heart of a situation, while skinning off the padding around the edges. The chapters of the novel read as standalone stories that for the most part are compelling in their own right. And because of the chronological sequence, as well as the thematic and situational echoes, Miles from Nowhere also carries the full weight and impact of a novel—one with a voice as strong as the people it represents.