Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

by Jamie Ford
4 Stars
Historical Fiction, WWII
Setting: Seattle
304 pages
Published 2009

Ellie's Review
This book was a fascinating read about the Japanese internment - I learned so much. However, this book was also a wonderful love story and a novel about father/son relationships. At times, the writing didn't flow that well, but I still really liked the book.

Book Summary
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 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.