Patti Kim was born in Pusan, Korea, in 1970 and immigrated to the United States in 1974. She was the Diane Cleaver Fellow at Ledig House, the New York writers‘ colony. A Cab Called Reliable is her first novel. It won the Towson University Prize for Literature in 1997 and it was a nominee for the Book-of-the-Month Club’s Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction. She lives in Potomac, Maryland.

Nine-year-old Ahn Joo lives with her parents and her little brother, Min Joo, in Arlington, Virginia. Two years ago the family moved from Pusan (Korea) to the U.S.. One day, when Ahn Joo comes home from school, she sees her mother leaving the house with her little brother. Her mother gets into a blue cab with the word RELIABLE written on the door. First, Ahn Joo hopes that her mother will come back to get her, too, but she soon realizes that her mother will not return. Ahn Joo knows why her mother has left the family: she always heard the mother arguing and fighting with the father who always comes home late, is often drunk and has only got a low-paid job. He can not fulfill the American Dream for his family. Ahn Joo has got an ambivalent relationship to her mother. On the one hand she misses her a lot and even as an adult she cannot overcome the loss of the mother. On the other hand she always had to endure that her mother blamed her for being the reason why the family came "to this awful country". Ahn Joo has got the impression that her mother never really loved her and believes that she likes her little brother more than she likes her.

Ahn Joo does not know what the word "reliable" means; she thinks that RELIABLE is the place because it was written on a cab. Her teacher explains her the true meaning of the word. As Ahn grows up she is constantly looking for a person she can rely on. After her mother has left the family she has to take care of the household and her father. Her only friend is Boris, a boy who lives in the neighborhood. He is her first boyfriend but then his family moves to Texas and Ahn Joo is alone again. It is not easy for Ahn Joo to make friends. She does not want to play with other Korean girls and even refuses to speak her native language. But she also has to face the problem that she is not accepted by her American classmates. Ahn Joo tries to get their attention by pretending that she can read palms.

After his wife has left him, Ahn Joo’s father starts a relationship with a woman named Loo Lah who moves into the flat. Ahn Joo cannot accept her as a substitute for her mother. When this relationships also fails, the father begins to change his life. He buys a vending truck and starts selling food in a mall in Washington, D.C.. Ahn Joo and her father move to a house in Ammandale, Virginia. She attends a Junior High School but is not very successful. Her real talent and passion is writing. She started in elementary school and won a writing contest with a piece called "The Voice of My Mother" which shows her feelings for her mother. As she gets older, she continues writing. Her father tells Ahn Joo a lot about his family in Korea which inspires her for new stories.

Her father tells her about his difficult childhood in Korea: He was not allowed to go to university and had to work on the farm while his brothers studied and became doctors. They were the sons of the father’s third and favorite wife. He runs away from home and immigrates to America to start a better life.

Especially the story of her aunt Han-il occupies Ahn Joo’s mind. Her father tells Ahn Joo that his sister has been accepted to study at one of the best universities for women in Korea, but her father would not pay her tuition fees. He sends her away to marry one of his friend’s sons. The marriage is a business deal. The sister becomes insane and she now lives and works at a Buddhist temple. Ahn Joo decides to write a story about her aunt. Writing stories helps Ahn Joo to deal with the problems she has to face as she gets older.

One of her main problems is that she doesn’t really know where she belongs to. She can not identify with the culture of her father and she always criticizes him because he can not speak English properly. Sometimes people ask Ahn Joo if she is Chinese and that makes her really angry:

Why you giving me that Chinese look like you can’t speak no English? You Chinese? No, I am not Chinese, nor am I Japanese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, dirty knees or look at these. I am a Korean-American. They sneered at me with their what-the-difference look. The difference is as apparent as night and day, rich and poor, salvation and damnation, heaven and hell, awareness and ignorance, literate and illiterate, you and me (p.111).

Ahn Joo is often confronted with prejudiced views and stereotyping. Language plays a very important role for her. It makes her angry that her father’s English is bad and she refuses to speak Korean. Her stories are written in English and she identifies herself with this language. On the other hand Ahn Joo has got prejudices against other immigrants like African Americans.

Ahn Joo and her father develop a close relationship. She takes care of him and he encourages her story writing. But the loss of her mother, her search for identity and her place in life make this relationship often quite difficult. Ahn Joo tries to adapt to the American culture as good as she can while her father lives in his own little world which is based on his past in Korea. The end of the novel deals with Ahn Joo’s struggle for independence from her father.