OF NIGHTINGALES THAT WEEP
by Katherine Paterson & illustrated by Haru Wells
Like Muna in The Sign of the Chrysanthemum (KR, 1973) Takiko, the daughter of a samurai, is a young teenager in 12th century Japan who loses a parent and moves about on her own during the wars between the Heike and the Genii dans. First seen as a protected child, Takiko adjusts to a humbler rural existence after her father's death, later becomes a favorite entertainer at the court of the infant emperor, is preoccupied then by her once-consummated love affair with an enemy spy, shares the pain and humiliation of her exiled court's defeat at sea, and at last endures exhausting, disfiguring field work beside the ugly, misshapen potter — her dead mother's second husband -whom Takiko herself decides in the end to marry. Again the exquisitely reconstructed backgrounds and episodes and the gradual character development will induce admirers of historical fiction to share Takiko's experience of her times and follow her dramatic progress from innocence to extremity.