Sophie Littlefield
Garden of Stones
Harlequin Mira (US: 18th December 2012)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)
I once heard a song (by Kasey Chambers?) on TV with the line: If you’re not pissed off at the world, then you’re just not paying attention. So true. And it’s impossible to read Sophie Littlefield’s Garden of Stones without getting pissed off at the American government during World War II.
I didn’t know about the internment camps. Back in the 1940s, if you were in the US but had Japanese ancestry, they assumed you were an enemy, a spy, or whatever false accusation they could come up with. And thus so many innocent civilians were stolen from their lives and dumped into “internment camps”. I don’t even know what that means, but the very fact they existed screams of racial profiling, prejudice, and all that other awful stuff.
The Pearl Harbor bombing and the unrelated death of Renjiro Takeda changes little Lucy Takeda’s life forever. She and her mother are sent to an internment camp in Manzanar, where events there continue to haunt Lucy well into the 1970s.
Garden of Stones will break your heart. It certainly broke mine. And if you’re not affected, then you’re just not paying attention.
P.S. I received a basic Australian high school education. We only learned about internment/concentration/death camps in Europe.
I think this story would break my heart. It sounds amazing. Thanks for posting about it!
It’s on NetGalley, if you want to request it. It’s a good read, though a sad one