3.5
Evergreen
ByPublisher Description
A Japanese American nurse's aide navigates the dangers of post-WWII and post-Manzanar life as she attempts to find justice for a broken family in this follow-up to the Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning Clark and Division.
Los Angeles, 1946: It’s been two years since Aki Ito and her family were released from Manzanar detention center and resettled in Chicago with other Japanese Americans. Now the Itos have finally been allowed to return home to California—but nothing is as they left it. The entire Japanese American community is starting from scratch, with thousands of people living in dismal refugee camps while they struggle to find new houses and jobs in over-crowded Los Angeles.
Aki is working as a nurse’s aide at the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights when an elderly Issei man is admitted with suspicious injuries. When she seeks out his son, she is shocked to recognize her husband’s best friend, Babe Watanabe. Could Babe be guilty of elder abuse?
Only a few days later, Little Tokyo is rocked by a murder at the low-income hotel where the Watanabes have been staying. When the cops start sniffing around Aki’s home, she begins to worry that the violence tearing through her community might threaten her family. What secrets have the Watanabes been hiding, and can Aki protect her husband from getting tangled up in a murder investigation?
Los Angeles, 1946: It’s been two years since Aki Ito and her family were released from Manzanar detention center and resettled in Chicago with other Japanese Americans. Now the Itos have finally been allowed to return home to California—but nothing is as they left it. The entire Japanese American community is starting from scratch, with thousands of people living in dismal refugee camps while they struggle to find new houses and jobs in over-crowded Los Angeles.
Aki is working as a nurse’s aide at the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights when an elderly Issei man is admitted with suspicious injuries. When she seeks out his son, she is shocked to recognize her husband’s best friend, Babe Watanabe. Could Babe be guilty of elder abuse?
Only a few days later, Little Tokyo is rocked by a murder at the low-income hotel where the Watanabes have been staying. When the cops start sniffing around Aki’s home, she begins to worry that the violence tearing through her community might threaten her family. What secrets have the Watanabes been hiding, and can Aki protect her husband from getting tangled up in a murder investigation?
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3.5
“Definitely more of a slow burn compared to Clark and Division, but overall I enjoyed it! Naomi Hirahara does a great job of bringing the characters and historical setting to life, and the twists were really clever and well done. Very Scream-coded in terms of the whodunnit aspect.”Change and growDiverse representationMemorableMinor characters stand outMorally ambiguousMultilayeredOriginalStrong relationshipsUnforgettable protagonistClever plottingLoose endsSlow start, strong finishTwistyWell-structuredEvocative imageryGrittyHistoricalSetting fits the storyVivid descriptionsDescriptiveEasy to readOriginalRepetitiveStraightforwardAbuseDeathGriefMurderRacismViolenceWar violence
“3.7 rounded up. I’ll start off with saying, I learned about the Japanese American incarceration during WWII through class in college but this was the first time I’d truly read about the aftermath and the resettling of Japanese Americans in CA. In that sense this book did a beautiful job of describing and explaining how it probably went down for many of them. It provided a great albeit depressing and infuriating picture of post WWII life for them. As a historical fiction, this book was very well done. As a murder mystery, it was a bit weak and didn’t really provide that sense of whodunit. Aki, the main character, is a bit infuriating with her lack of communication especially when she wants her husband to communicate more? Idk seems hypocritical in that sense. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed the historical fiction aspect of this book.”
About Naomi Hirahara
Naomi Hirahara is the Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author of Clark and Division, and the Edgar Award–winning author of the Mas Arai mystery series, including Summer of the Big Bachi, which was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and one of the Chicago Tribune’s Ten Best Mysteries and Thrillers; Gasa Gasa Girl; Snakeskin Shamisen; and Hiroshima Boy. She is also the author of the LA-based Ellie Rush mysteries. A former editor of The Rafu Shimpo newspaper, she has co-written nonfiction books like Life after Manzanar and the award-winning Terminal Island: Lost Communities on America's Edge.
Other books by Naomi Hirahara
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