A heartfelt read that illuminates an important chapter of American history.
A debut novel follows a Japanese American family dealing with the events of World War II.
As he approaches his 18th birthday, innocent and aimless Yoshi Yamaguchi’s largest concerns are his performance on the baseball team and whether his crush will finally notice him. After graduation, he begins working in the family grocery store with his father, a quiet, stoic man with strong political convictions. When Yoshi voices his desire to join the Army (the only military branch open to Japanese citizens), his father flatly rejects the idea. He acquiesces only after America enters World War II, when Yoshi’s mother points out the potential merits of enlisting versus being drafted. But Yoshi’s application is denied on racial grounds. Soon, he and his family are forced to sell their possessions, leave their home, and travel to the Manzanar internment camp (originally known as the Owens Valley Relocation Center). With little information about their future and mindful of the horrors of European concentration camps, the Yamaguchis experience not only the sadness of relocation, but also fears for their lives. Inside the camp, the Yamaguchis struggle to get medical attention for their ailing grandmother. With the little autonomy granted him, Yoshi must make a decision that could affect the rest of his life. The historical aspects of the narrative are well researched, such as the contentious politics of the Japanese American Citizens League. For instance, membership in the JACL was only open to American citizens, excluding many issei (first-generation Japanese immigrants), such as Yoshi’s mother and grandmother. This angers people like Yoshi’s father, who was finally granted citizenship “almost two decades” after his military service in World War I. One of the novel’s greatest strengths is the dynamic between the various Yamaguchi family members. Williams’ writing is generally straightforward and unembellished, but the tale’s incidents often evoke strong emotions. Yoshi’s characterization as a naïve, somewhat awkward young man allows readers to see historic events through the lens of an accessible narrator. Included in the book are several poignant images by debut illustrator McInvale.
A heartfelt read that illuminates an important chapter of American history.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73404-660-1
Page Count: 358
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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