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by Naomi Hirahara
Set in 1944 Chicago, Edgar Award-winner Naomi Hirahara's eye-opening and poignant new mystery, the story of a young woman searching for the truth about her revered older sister's death, brings to focus the struggles of one Japanese American family released from mass incarceration at Manzanar during World War II.
Chicago, 1944: Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life in California the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled two thousand miles away in Chicago, where Aki's older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier and moved to the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family's reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train.
Aki, who worshipped her sister, is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose's death a suicide. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life. Her instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth.
Inspired by historical events, Clark and Division infuses an atmospheric and heartbreakingly real crime with rich period details and delicately wrought personal stories Naomi Hirahara has gleaned from thirty years of research and archival work in Japanese American history.
"Clark and Division is as much about communal trauma as it is about the anguish of the Ito family, who are at the story's center. The grief of the Japanese community in Chicago infuses the atmosphere of this novel, offering a compelling, nuanced tale of loss." —BookPage (starred review)
"The treatment of American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II comes to life in this mystery by Hirahara ... Hirahara does a masterly job of incorporating extensive historical research into an emotionally compelling story. Highly recommended for readers who enjoy high-quality historical fiction with well-drawn characters and an engrossing plot." —Library Journal (starred review)
"Elegant prose matches the meticulous research. This well-crafted tale of injustice isn't just for mystery fans." —Publishers Weekly
"Deeply researched ... Hirahara peppers the mystery with a detail-rich portrait of Chicago during the war and of newly arrived Japanese Americans trying to negotiate a largely hostile new world." —Booklist
"An effective whodunit that's also a sensitive coming-of-age story." —Kirkus Reviews
"Naomi Hirahara's Clark and Division opened my heart and mind to specifics of the experience of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Rich in period detail, it is page-turning historical fiction, a tender family story, and a mystery that plays on two levels: What happened to Rose Ito? and At what cost are Japanese Americans finally seen as full Americans? It's a story that moved me deeply." —Attica Locke, New York Times bestselling author of Heaven, My Home
"Clark and Division does what crime novels do best: It uses a wonderfully wrought, ticking time-bomb of a story to illuminate a larger social issue, in this case the incarceration and resettlement of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II. A jewel of a novel. Buy it, read it, enjoy it." —Michael Harvey, author of The Chicago Way
This information about Clark and Division (A Japantown Mystery) was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Naomi Hirahara is the Edgar Award–winning author of the Mas Arai mystery series, including Summer of the Big Bachi, which was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and one of Chicago Tribune'sTen Best Mysteries and Thrillers; Gasa Gasa Girl; Snakeskin Shamisen; and Hiroshima Boy. She is also the author of the LA-based Ellie Rush mysteries. A former editor of The Rafu Shimpo newspaper, she has co-written non-fiction books like Life after Manzanar and the award-winning Terminal Island: Lost Communities of Los Angeles Harbor. The Stanford University alumna was born and raised in Altadena, CA; she now resides in the adjacent town of Pasadena, CA.
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