First Line: Rose was always there, even while I was being born.
For twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her family, the happy, prosperous world they knew in Los Angeles is gone forever. Imprisoned in Manzanar since Pearl Harbor, Aki and her parents have finally been released, but they're being moved further east to Chicago to rejoin Aki's older sister, Rose.
When they arrive, it's to the news that Rose committed suicide by jumping in front of a train at Chicago's Clark and Division station. Aki is convinced that her beloved sister did not commit suicide. The police can't be bothered to look into Rose's death any further, so Aki knows that finding the truth is up to her. What she doesn't realize is just how many secrets she will be uncovering to discover what really happened.
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If you've never read about the lives of Japanese Americans during World War II, you should read Naomi Hirahara's Clark and Division. Readers follow twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her family from their happy pre-Pearl Harbor lives in Los Angeles to their imprisonment in Manzanar in California's Owens Valley to their resettlement in the Japanese American neighborhood of Clark and Division in Chicago.
Readers see everything through Aki's eyes. She worships her older sister, Rose, who is beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished-- everything that Aki wishes she was. In comparison, Aki feels like a slow, unattractive lump, and it's not until the Itos have been in Chicago for a while that it becomes clear that Aki has been selling herself short for most of her life.
Life in Chicago isn't easy. Even giving Rose a proper burial is difficult since cemeteries are not accepting Japanese interments, and Aki cannot believe how everyone seems comfortable with the verdict of suicide on Rose's death. As she juggles her job at the Newberry Library with dealing with her parents, she still finds time to search for answers because she thinks nothing of fighting for her sister even though she won't fight for herself.
Hirahara does an excellent job of weaving a real feeling of menace into the story, and the mystery is a satisfying one to try to solve. But more than a mystery, it's the story of the Japanese American experience during World War II that's the star of Clark and Division. Watching Aki navigate her way through governmental roadblocks, prejudice, lies, and fear to finally begin to get a real sense of herself and what she's capable of is the best part of this book, and the author's list of suggested reading at the end is invaluable.
Mystery, character study, history... Clark and Division is a story that you won't want to put down until you've read the very last page.
Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara
eISBN: 9781641292504
Soho Press © 2021
eBook, 312 pages
Historical Mystery, Standalone
Rating: A
Source: Net Galley
