“Middle Grade Fiction”
means “for ages 8—12”
Author Appearance:
On Tuesday, May 24 at 11am
I’ll be speaking about my books at the Affinity Senior Living Community in Kennewick, WA.
Come if you’re nearby!
Today I bring you a masterful novelist.
I’ve mostly focused to date on bringing you more of the genre I write in, (what’s called “middle grade fiction” in the trade), but I realize it’s YOU reading my weekly missives, and you, like me, are a young-at-heart adult!
So I’ve decided it’s more than fine to share adult books I’ve enjoyed as well. They might be even more to your liking than what I’ve been bringing you.
If you haven’t yet heard about it, let me bring Isabel Allende’s The Japanese Lover to your attention. It’s a book about love—in its many forms, with its implicit challenges and hurdles, the things that keep us from it, and the ways we are forever pulled back to it.
The story is told in different years, set between World War II and present day, and from two different points of view: Alma Belasco, born in approx. 1927 in Poland, moved to San Francisco to be raised by an uncle and his family just before the Jewish persecution in Poland became a terrifying reality, and Irina Bazili, born 1987 in Moldova, immigrated to the Texas to join her mother at 16 where she faced her own private hell before escaping to make a life on her own.
The two characters intersect in present day: Irina is an aide at Lark House, a Senior Residence where Alma has moved in. Irina begins to suspect that Alma has a secret lover—and slowly we learn of the life-long love of Alma and Ichimei Fukuda, the son of the Belasco family’s Japanese gardener. Their love is star-crossed in economic and social brackets alone—add to that the corrosive view of the Japanese held in our country through the internment camps where Ichimei and his family were sent, and beyond.
It’s simply a delicious read—one to savor and enjoy. It has an epic nature—the tale sweeps across time and continents, wars and culture, youth and age.
Born in Peru, raised in Chile, from where she fled as a political refugee, Isabel Allende is an author I should have discovered long ago (due to my own connection to Peru). She has many brilliant works, she’s a bestselling and acclaimed author—and this book is evidence of her deep understanding of the human heart.
A deep and moving journey by a masterful novelist—Happy Reading!
Click here to read about the book on the author’s website.