The Woman in the White Kimono by Ana Johns

Published: 2019, Legend Press

Genre: Fiction

Themes: Japan, love, grief, culture

My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤

"Grief is the price we pay for love"

Queen Elizabeth II

This really is the most beautifully crafted book, and if you read it you will have:

Intrigue
Romance
Drama
Heartbreak
Desperation, then finally.....
A renewed appreciation of the power of love

Every page is written with the same neat precision as the folds in a Japanese kimono. Care is taken to slowly build the story through the eyes of seventeen year old Naoko, who writes of her experiences in Japan in 1957, and alternately through Tori, a present day American woman whose father dies carrying a secret.

Tori's father served in the US Navy as part of the occupying forces based in Japan following World War 2, and in his final hours before dying he asks her to open and read a letter that has recently been returned from Japan as undelivered mail. The letter reveals a love affair from long ago and Tori is so disturbed by the revelations that she wastes no time in making the long journey to Japan to try and gather the full story.

Ana Johns felt compelled to write this book about Tori's journey after discovering that her own father had loved a Japanese girl but had been turned away from her family's house as he was an American sailor, and therefore still considered to be 'the enemy'. The US Navy also did it's best to prevent marriage between Japanese women and American men, so thousands of girls and children were left behind with no support, and were cruelly shunned by everyone around them.

Everything in the book is based on true events and taken from accounts given by Japanese people who were affected by that period of history.

Comments

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