Corner of Bitter and Sweet

HOTEL on the CORNER of BITTER and SWEET
This story takes place near the beginning of WWII after Pearl Harbor. It is a story of how even though America was the land of the free, it was also the land of divisions as fierce hatreds and passoniate, oft-misguided patriotism faced off against each other. This novel is about how a Chinese boy and a Japanese girl, both forced to attend a white school by their parents come to enjoy each other's company. As the government disbands the Japanese neighborhoods in Seattle, WA and sends little Keiko and her family to an internment camp, her friend Henry, against his father's strong admonitions, still finds ways to see her and her family. Later convinced that he will never see Keiko again, after she has not written him back and one day he gets a letter 'return to sender' Henry marries a good Chinese woman. Before Henry marries Ethel though, the Japanese families are allowed to return home, and Henry goes to the park where he and Keiko always met, for remembrance sake [here is one of my favorite paragraphs in the whole book] 'It was during this stolen moment, this spot of quiet melancholy, that Henry saw what he most wanted, and most feared. Standing across the street, staring directly at him, were a pair of beautiful chestnut brown eyes. What did he see in them? He couldn't tell. Sadness and joy? Or was he projecting what was in his own heart? She stood motionless. Taller now - her hair much longer as it drifted away from her shoulders in the direction of the cool summer breeze. Henry rubbed his eyes and she was gone, lost in the celebrating crowds that still flooded the streets. But it couldn't have been Keiko. She'd have written.'[p.261] I won't tell you how the story continues and then concludes. I think you would be mildly surprised. It is a story that not only again challenges us to look at an event in history that we would dismiss; and yet in Henry and Keiko's relationship we find that love that crosses boundaries. Its a story that would fit for every parent to relate to their own kids and grandkids! ENJOY
Jamie Ford, 'Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet' [A historical novel]BAllantine Books, 2009 ISBN: 9780345505347