Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford on January 27, 2009
Genres: Fiction / Historical / General, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Sagas
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
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This was a book about WWII internment camps but from the perspective of the Japanese internment camps. Not necessarily a fresh take, but another look at how WWII affected this group of people.
In 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II. As the owner displays and unfurls a Japanese parasol, Henry, a Chinese American, remembers a young Japanese American girl from his childhood in the 1940s—Keiko Okabe, with whom he forged a bond of friendship and innocent love that transcended the prejudices of their Old World ancestors. After Keiko and her family were evacuated to the internment camps, she and Henry could only hope that their promise to each other would be kept. Now, forty years later, Henry explores the hotel’s basement for the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot even begin to measure. His search will take him on a journey to revisit the sacrifices he has made for family, for love, for country.
I was surprised this was a debut novel. This writing was so moving even though the subject matter was heavy. This book reminded me that there are so many perspectives on the war and everyone’s experience is so different and had such lasting effects. I always enjoy a dual timeline story. I didn’t realize the story of how a Chinese boy’s assimilation during WWII could affect how we look at immigration in today’s world. What a surprisingly great book for book club conversation.