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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.
Praise for Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“A tender and satisfying novel set in a time and a place lost forever, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet gives us a glimpse of the damage that is caused by war—not the sweeping damage of the battlefield but the cold, cruel damage to the hearts and humanity of individual people. This is a beautifully written book that will make you think. And, more important, it will make you feel.”—Garth Stein, bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain
“Mesmerizing and evocative, a tale of conflicted loyalties and timeless devotion.”—Sara Gruen, bestselling author of Water for Elephants
“A wartime-era Chinese-Japanese variation on Romeo and Juliet . . . The period detail [is] so revealing and so well rendered.”—The Seattle Times
“A poignant story that transports the reader back in time . . . a satisfying and heart-wrenching tale.”—Deseret Morning News
“A lovely combination of romantic coincidence, historic detail and realism that is smooth and highly readable . . . Ford does wonderful work in re-creating prewar Seattle.”—The Oregonian
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Creators
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Publisher
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Awards
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Release date
January 27, 2009 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781415962107
- File size: 313194 KB
- Duration: 10:52:29
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- Lexile® Measure: 850
- Text Difficulty: 4-5
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Reviews
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Thanks to Feodor Chin's flexible voice and agile tones, what could be an overly sentimental look at a dark period in American history becomes a tender reminiscence. Twelve-year-old Henry Lee, a Chinese-American boy, feels an immediate, if taboo, connection to Keiko, a Japanese-American girl. During WWII Japanese-Americans were persecuted, placed in internment camps, and separated from loved ones. When Keiko is interned in Idaho, Henry promises to wait for her. Forty years later Henry stumbles upon relics from the past, rediscovering Keiko through memory and flashback. Occasionally clunky writing is softened by Chin's character portrayals and narration. Henry's difficult relationship with his father, his changing feelings for Keiko, the turmoil of adolescence, the sting of prejudice--all are precisely drawn by Chin's sensitive performance. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine -
September 15, 2008
Ford’s strained debut concerns Henry Lee, a Chinese-American in Seattle who, in 1986, has just lost his wife to cancer. After Henry hears that the belongings of Japanese immigrants interned during WWII have been found in the basement of the Panama Hotel, the narrative shuttles between 1986 and the 1940s in a predictable story that chronicles the losses of old age and the bewilderment of youth. Henry recalls the difficulties of life in America during WWII, when he and his Japanese-American school friend, Keiko, wandered through wartime Seattle. Keiko and her family are later interned in a camp, and Henry, horrified by America’s anti-Japanese hysteria, is further conflicted because of his Chinese father’s anti-Japanese sentiment. Henry’s adult life in 1986 is rather mechanically rendered, and Ford clumsily contrasts Henry’s difficulty in communicating with his college-age son, Marty, with Henry’s own alienation from his father, who was determined to Americanize him. The wartime persecution of Japanese immigrants is presented well, but the flatness of the narrative and Ford’s reliance on numerous cultural clichés make for a disappointing read.
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