Book review by Aarene Storms: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

By Aarene Storms, Youth Services Librarian, Richmond Beach Library, KCLS

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

In 1986, the new owner of the old Panama Hotel in Seattle discovered stacks of boxes and crates in the basement--boxes which contained the precious belongings of Japanese families abruptly rounded up and sent to internment camps at the beginning of World War II. The narration of this story jumps between the life of Henry Lee as a Seattle-born Chinese boy in 1942, and Henry Lee as a man in 1986 who remembers the deliberate dismantling of Seattle's Japantown by white and Chinese civil leaders...and the loss of his Japanese-American childhood sweetheart Keiko, who went to the Minidoka Camp with her family and never returned.

Weaving historical strands of Chinese-Japanese conflicts in Seattle, fear of the "Yellow Peril,' and wartime jazz music in Seattle, this modern story rings with remembrance and regret...and love.

Highly recommended for readers 14 to adult; especially recommended for book discussion groups.

No sex, minimal cussing; the violence is mostly off-page.

The events may not have happened; still, the story is true. --R. Silvern