Books Set in North America; Indiana, United States

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, by Timothy Egan (2023)

Read: September 29, 2024

5 Stars

Books Set in North America, Washington State, United States

Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson (1995)

 

Snow Falling on Cedars is part trial novel, part mystery.  Set in San Piedro, a remote island in the Puget Sound in the 1950s, it takes place in the years after World War II, where Kabuo Miyamoto, a Japanese-American stands trial for the murder of fellow fisherman, Carl Heine.  Many of the men of San Piedro had fought in the War, and many are still skeptical of the Japanese.

 

Although Kabuo was born in the United States, and thus was American, he was born of immigrant parents.  Even before the War, there was considerable prejudice against the Japanese who lived on the island.  Furthermore, there were laws which prevented its Japanese citizens from owning land.  Underlying this novel is a feud between the Heine and Kabuo families.  Carl’s father had an arrangement to sell Kabuo’s father 7 acres of property for growing strawberries.  Kabuo’s father was making regular payments, but before he could make the final two payments, he and his family were sent off to an internment camp.  While Miyamoto family was interned, Carl Heine’s father died.  Carl’s mother, Etta, was a bitter and prejudiced woman, who took the opportunity to sell the land to another strawberry family.  When the Miyamoto family tried to claim their land, they were surprised to find it had been sold out from under them.  This feud brewed for many years.

 

When Carl was found drowned under suspicious circumstances, the local law enforcement was quick to settle on Kabuo as their prime suspect.  The novel begins with the trial, but the story is told in flashbacks as the reader meets the characters.  The reader learns their backstories and the interactions between the townspeople and the island’s Japanese community.  As evidence piles up against Kabuo, prejudices of the entire community are exposed.  The novel builds the suspense to the end.

 

Read first: December 29, 2003 / Second time: October 21, 2021 (for Hadassah Attorney Council Book discussion)

 

4 Stars

Books Set in the United States: Washington State

The Girl Who Wrote in Silk, by Kelli Estes (2015)

The Girl Who Wrote in Silk is a historical novel of a slice of Chinese live in the United States in the late 1800s in the Northwest.  The novel follows two young women ~ present day Inara Erickson, who’s family owns a large shipping company out of Seattle and Mei Lien, a young Chinese woman who lived in the late 1800s.  The novel goes back and forth between the lives of these two woman.

Inara inherited the estate of her single aunt who owned a home on an island off the coast of Seattle.  The estate brought back memories of her childhood, as she and her family summered there.  Initially, she sought to sell the estate, but decided to turn it into a boutique hotel. During the construction, she discovered an elaborately embroidered silk sleeve to a garment hidden in a staircase.  The sleeve depicted a strange story of a ship and people floating in the water.  She takes the sleeve to a Chinese professor at a university to inquire about its authenticity.

The late 1800s were terrible times for the Chinese living in the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act had been signed in 1882, forbidding the immigration of Chinese laborers.  Mobs in various west-coast towns literally forced the Chinese from their homes.  Mei Lien and her father were forced onto a boat, ostensibly sending them back to China. When Mei Lien learned of their actual destination, she was literally thrown overboard and was rescued by Joseph McElroy, a farmer on one of the Orcas Island.

In the course of Inara’s research on the sleeve, she discovers a terrible family secret that has been in her family for years.  When she tells her father, he warns her to continue to keep the secret because it could destroy his shipping business.

The chapters of Mei Lien are very fascinating.  We see a young girl exposed to the prejudices of the whites, and how she learns to cope.  After she married a white man, his family refused to accept her.

The chapters on Inara are initially interesting, however, her renovation of the estate into a hotel do not ring true, nor does her budding romance with the professor.

Still, this was a good book and provided an insight into a piece of history that is not often addressed.

Read: July 11, 2018

4 Stars