What Fiction are you reading this week, April 14, 2024?

[japple]

15. Thanks for the weekly thread, hermetic. I'm not reading fiction this week, but a

very interesting story nonetheless. David Mas Masumoto's book, Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm

I discover a "lost" aunt, separated from our
family due to racism and discrimination against the disabled. She had a mental disability due to childhood meningitis. She was taken away in 1942 when all Japanese Americans were considered the enemy and imprisoned. She then became a "ward" of the state. We believed she had died, but 70 years later found her alive and living a few miles from our family farm. How did she survive? Why was she kept hidden? How did both shame and resilience empower my family to forge forward in a land that did not want them? I am haunted and driven to explore my identity and the meaning of family—especially as farmers tied to the land. I uncover family secrets that bind us to a sense of history buried in the earth that we work and a sense of place that defines us.

So far SO good. Lovely writing style.


Edit to add: I didn't realize that Terry Kay died in 2020. Also, many readers will rejoice that Leif Enger has a new book, I Cheerfully Refuse and it sounds like another winner!