4.0
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
ByPublisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An impressive, bitter, and sweet debut that explores the age-old conflicts between father and son, the beauty and sadness of what happened to Japanese Americans in the Seattle era during World War II, and the depths and longing of deep-heart love.”—Lisa See
“A tender and satisfying novel.”—Garth Stein, bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain
In 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II. As the owner displays and unfurls a Japanese parasol, Henry, a Chinese American, remembers a young Japanese American girl from his childhood in the 1940s—Keiko Okabe, with whom he forged a bond of friendship and innocent love that transcended the prejudices of their Old World ancestors. After Keiko and her family were evacuated to the internment camps, she and Henry could only hope that their promise to each other would be kept. Now, forty years later, Henry explores the hotel’s basement for the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot even begin to measure. His search will take him on a journey to revisit the sacrifices he has made for family, for love, for country.
“A tender and satisfying novel.”—Garth Stein, bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain
In 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II. As the owner displays and unfurls a Japanese parasol, Henry, a Chinese American, remembers a young Japanese American girl from his childhood in the 1940s—Keiko Okabe, with whom he forged a bond of friendship and innocent love that transcended the prejudices of their Old World ancestors. After Keiko and her family were evacuated to the internment camps, she and Henry could only hope that their promise to each other would be kept. Now, forty years later, Henry explores the hotel’s basement for the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot even begin to measure. His search will take him on a journey to revisit the sacrifices he has made for family, for love, for country.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesHotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet Reviews
4.0
“This was one of my grandma‘s favorite books, and I found it at the thrift store and decided to read it. I cried the majority of the time- just a constant flow of tears the whole book.
The characters, the love, the sweetness, the heartbreak, and just everything in between was so beautiful. Highly recommend.”
“What a story!!! It has it all...love, pain, heartache, family conflicts, real and varied relationships, war, hatred...and a lovely ending.”
BelievableChange and growDiverse representationLikeableMemorableMinor characters stand outMultilayeredOriginalStrong relationshipsAddictiveClever plottingEpic scopeGripping/excitingSatisfying conclusionAtmosphericEvocative imageryHistoricalImmersive world-buildingSurrealVivid descriptionsBeautifully-writtenClear but uninspiredDescriptiveOriginalRepetitiveStraightforwardRacism
About Jamie Ford
Jamie Ford is the great-grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the Western name “Ford,” thus confusing countless generations. Ford is an award-winning short-story writer, an alumnus of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and a survivor of Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp. Having grown up near Seattle’s Chinatown, he now lives in Montana with his wife and children.
Other books by Jamie Ford
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