1957, Japan: The time has come for seventeen year old Naoko's family to organise a tradition, arranged marriage for their daughter. Naoko has agreed to meet their preferred suitor - the son of one of her father's business associates - on the condition that they will also consider her choice of partner too. The only problem is that they do not know the man she loves is a sailor in the American Navy - a gaiijin (foreigner).
As soon as Naoko's sailor comes to her house to meet her family, they are appalled by the thought of a marriage that could bring shame upon them. Little do they know that Naoko already carries her American lover's child. She is forced to flee her family home for a chance to marry for love and her choice will change the course of her life.
Present day, America: Tori Kovac is caring for her dying father and finds a letter that changes everything she thought she knew about him. This letter takes her half-way across the world on a quest to find out the truth behind her father's stories about when he was stationed in Japan in the 1950's. What she finds there will make her reassess what kind of man her father really was. The real story of his time in Japan will break her heart.
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This book will take you back in time to a Japan which is trying to get back on its feet after the Second World War. The American occupation of Japan had come to an end, but American sailors were still everywhere and many Japanese girls were tempted into romantic entanglements with them.
Naoko is a young Japanese girl who falls in love with a man that her family, and countrymen, sadly cannot bring themselves to accept. She desperately wants to settle down with her blue-eyed sailor, and the reality of such a relationship at this time cannot change her mind. A marriage to a gaiijin is unthinkable and would bring great shame in the minds of her family, stuck as they are in the past.
Such relationships were looked upon as taboo and the girls were often ostracised by their families, especially if they became pregnant. The mixed-race babies born of such romances were not accepted by the Japanese population in general - many were abandoned in orphanages, or in the worst cases, simply left to die. There are horrific tales to tell about these girls and their babies, and this book touches upon their sad stories.
The lucky girls who managed to marry their American suitors and make it to America at least had a chance to live a happy life, even if the American population were not welcoming. It was often hard to get permission to bring a Japanese bride home to America though, and many girls were abandoned to their fate in Japan.
This book is beautifully written and the story weaves back and forth in time, following the threads of Naoko's story, in between Tori's quest for the truth - but the full heartbreaking reality of what happened as a result of the forbidden romance between Tori's father and Naoko only becomes clear at the very end of the book.
This is the kind of book that you will find yourself thinking about for quite a while after you have finished it. It is so incredibly sad, but told with such mesmerising skill that you can't help racing through the pages - even if you know your heart is going to break.
I should also mention that the book cover is one of the most beautiful I have seen for a long time.
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