![]() ![]() The older Henry, a recent widower living in 1980s Seattle, reflects in a series of flashbacks on his burgeoning romance with Keiko and its abrupt ending when her family was evacuated. The occasionally sappy prose tends to overtly express subtleties that readers would be happier to glean for themselves, but the tender relationship between the two young people is moving. His salvation arrives in the form of Keiko, a Japanese girl with whom Henry forms an instant-and forbidden-bond. When Henry Lee’s staunchly nationalistic father pins an “I am Chinese” button to his 12-year-old son’s shirt and enrolls him in an all-white prep school, Henry finds himself friendless and at the mercy of schoolyard bullies. Whites, blacks, Chinese and Japanese live in separate neighborhoods, and their children attend different schools. In 1940s Seattle, ethnicities do not mix. Sentimental, heartfelt novel portrays two children separated during the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. ![]()
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