I Am the Clay, Chaim Potok

An old woman and an old man flee from their village outside of Seoul (south of the river Han) when the Chinese join the North Korean People’s Army and invade Seoul for the second time. In the early days of their journey they find a boy, bleeding with a shrapnel wound, in a ditch. Having lost a son in childbirth, she rescues him more than once from the brink of death, her prayers to the spirits