Image via Boswell Book Company
During World War II, the United States government ordered more than 120,000 Japanese Americans to leave their homes and relocate to remote, military-style “incarceration” camps along the West Coast. One of these camps, the Manzanar War Relocation Center, was located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains and housed over 10,000 Japanese Americans between 1942 and 1946.
In acclaimed writer Naomi Hirahara’s new mystery, Clark and Division, readers follow one Japanese American family that has just been released from Manzanar. After spending almost three years in a mass detention camp, 20-year-old Aki Ito and her parents head to Chicago to reunite with Aki’s older sister, Rose, who months earlier had moved to the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets.
Tragically, before the family arrives, Rose is killed by a subway train, which officials rule a suicide. The thrilling story that unfolds in Clark and Division is an eye-opening tale inspired by historical events and rich with period details. Told through the prism of one young woman’s experiences, readers relive one of our country’s cruelest examples of prejudice as they are simultaneously drawn into a devastating family drama.
Hirahara is the Edgar Award-winning author of the Mas Arai mystery series and a former editor of the Rafu Shimpo Los Angeles’ Japanese daily newspaper. She will discuss her latest novel, Clark and Division, at a virtual event sponsored by Boswell Books, 7 p.m. Sept. 14.
