Ahoy there me mateys! I have no idea where I first heard about this novel but it it was kismet to have picked it up to read. Ye see when I was perusing the news, I read a fascinating (and depressing) piece on the Japanese internment camps of WWII. Later that same day, I picked up this novel thinking it would be a young adult novel but found instead a fantastic historical fiction book about a Japanese family in America and how WWII affected them.

Ye see this story was "based on Otsuka’s own family history: her grandfather was arrested by the FBI as a suspected spy for Japan the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, and her mother, uncle and grandmother spent three years in an internment camp in Topaz, Utah." Yet the novel is told from multi-person perspective of a single family who remain nameless in the novel.

I don't know how to do this book justice - it was that good. I found this novel to be evocative, lyrical, haunting, engaging, and heart wrenching. I read it in one sitting and found meself avoiding picking up another book and pondering the ramifications in what I had read for a couple days before I could even begin to process the effects of this book on my being. And yet I continue to fail at capturing its resonance despite this effort of putting me thoughts down.

This dark period in United States history was captured beautifully and soul-crushingly in this author's work. Especially in the details. Small details helped me feel the horror of the family's pain. Images of slippers, the smell of horses in the racetrack stalls where the family was forced to live, a single rosebush. The last chapter in particular was extremely powerful.

Words truly fail me. But I recommend this one without a doubt.

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