I love when a novel exceeds my expectations! This was my experience with Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara.
Given the publisher (Soho Crime) and the cover, I expected this to be gritty noir crime. However, this is powerful historical fiction about the far-reaching impacts of a shameful US policy, told through the experiences of one Japanese American family. The author has conducted extensive research and has written award-winning non-fiction books on the subject, which is evident in this well-written mystery.
The premise: The Ito family (sisters Rose and Aki and their parents) is leading a typical middle-class early 1940s American life in California. Then Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and their world completely changed. Forced to leave their home, jobs, and schools and move to the Manzanar concentration camp, they were incarcerated with thousands of fellow Japanese American citizens for 2 years. The War Relocation Authority chose beautiful and charming Rose to leave the camp first and begin her resettled life in Chicago. When Aki and her parents are allowed to leave and join Rose, their excitement turns to heartbreak when they arrive to learn that Rose died the day before. Aki doesn't believe the official cause of death and while struggling to navigate her new life in Chicago, sets out to learn the truth about her sister's death.
I appreciated so many aspects of this mystery - the relationship dynamics of the Ito family and among Rose and Aki's peers, the depiction of stark poverty in the family's early days in Chicago, and the romance that brings a glimmer of light to otherwise dark times. And, with Aki's plum job at The Newberry Library, I enjoyed her coworkers, their library tasks, and their comments about the patrons.
Thank you to Soho Crime for the review copy of this fantastic novel. I'll be seeking out other mysteries by this author.
Given the publisher (Soho Crime) and the cover, I expected this to be gritty noir crime. However, this is powerful historical fiction about the far-reaching impacts of a shameful US policy, told through the experiences of one Japanese American family. The author has conducted extensive research and has written award-winning non-fiction books on the subject, which is evident in this well-written mystery.
The premise: The Ito family (sisters Rose and Aki and their parents) is leading a typical middle-class early 1940s American life in California. Then Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and their world completely changed. Forced to leave their home, jobs, and schools and move to the Manzanar concentration camp, they were incarcerated with thousands of fellow Japanese American citizens for 2 years. The War Relocation Authority chose beautiful and charming Rose to leave the camp first and begin her resettled life in Chicago. When Aki and her parents are allowed to leave and join Rose, their excitement turns to heartbreak when they arrive to learn that Rose died the day before. Aki doesn't believe the official cause of death and while struggling to navigate her new life in Chicago, sets out to learn the truth about her sister's death.
I appreciated so many aspects of this mystery - the relationship dynamics of the Ito family and among Rose and Aki's peers, the depiction of stark poverty in the family's early days in Chicago, and the romance that brings a glimmer of light to otherwise dark times. And, with Aki's plum job at The Newberry Library, I enjoyed her coworkers, their library tasks, and their comments about the patrons.
Thank you to Soho Crime for the review copy of this fantastic novel. I'll be seeking out other mysteries by this author.
If you've never read about the lives of Japanese Americans during World War II, you should read Naomi Hirahara's Clark and Division. Readers follow twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her family from their happy pre-Pearl Harbor lives in Los Angeles to their imprisonment in Manzanar in California's Owens Valley to their resettlement in the Japanese American neighborhood of Clark and Division in Chicago.
Readers see everything through Aki's eyes. She worships her older sister, Rose, who is beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished-- everything that Aki wishes she was. In comparison, Aki feels like a slow, unattractive lump, and it's not until the Itos have been in Chicago for a while that it becomes clear that Aki has been selling herself short for most of her life.
Life in Chicago isn't easy. Even giving Rose a proper burial is difficult since cemeteries are not accepting Japanese interments, and Aki cannot believe how everyone seems comfortable with the verdict of suicide on Rose's death. As she juggles her job at the Newberry Library with dealing with her parents, she still finds time to search for answers because she thinks nothing of fighting for her sister even though she won't fight for herself.
Hirahara does an excellent job of weaving a real feeling of menace into the story, and the mystery is a satisfying one to try to solve. But more than a mystery, it's the story of the Japanese American experience during World War II that's the star of Clark and Division. Watching Aki navigate her way through governmental roadblocks, prejudice, lies, and fear to finally begin to get a real sense of herself and what she's capable of is the best part of this book, and the author's list of suggested reading at the end is invaluable.
Mystery, character study, history... Clark and Division is a story that you won't want to put down until you've read the very last page.
(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley)
Readers see everything through Aki's eyes. She worships her older sister, Rose, who is beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished-- everything that Aki wishes she was. In comparison, Aki feels like a slow, unattractive lump, and it's not until the Itos have been in Chicago for a while that it becomes clear that Aki has been selling herself short for most of her life.
Life in Chicago isn't easy. Even giving Rose a proper burial is difficult since cemeteries are not accepting Japanese interments, and Aki cannot believe how everyone seems comfortable with the verdict of suicide on Rose's death. As she juggles her job at the Newberry Library with dealing with her parents, she still finds time to search for answers because she thinks nothing of fighting for her sister even though she won't fight for herself.
Hirahara does an excellent job of weaving a real feeling of menace into the story, and the mystery is a satisfying one to try to solve. But more than a mystery, it's the story of the Japanese American experience during World War II that's the star of Clark and Division. Watching Aki navigate her way through governmental roadblocks, prejudice, lies, and fear to finally begin to get a real sense of herself and what she's capable of is the best part of this book, and the author's list of suggested reading at the end is invaluable.
Mystery, character study, history... Clark and Division is a story that you won't want to put down until you've read the very last page.
(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley)
Interesting look at one of the effects of the incarceration of American born Japanese during WWII. Characters were well written and slowly developed during the course of the story and you did want to know what happens to them. Probably a good book to be required reading for a history class. Well worth reading.
