{"product_id":"hotel-on-the-corner-of-bitter-and-sweetisbn-9780345505347","title":"Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eBESTSELLER • “An impressive, bitter, and sweet debut that explores the age-old conflicts between father and son, the beauty and sadness of what happened to Japanese Americans in the Seattle era during World War II, and the depths and longing of deep-heart love.”—Lisa See\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“A tender and satisfying novel.”—Garth Stein, bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Art of Racing in the Rain\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II. As the owner displays and unfurls a Japanese parasol, Henry, a Chinese American, remembers a young Japanese American girl from his childhood in the 1940s—Keiko Okabe, with whom he forged a bond of friendship and innocent love that transcended the prejudices of their Old World ancestors. After Keiko and her family were evacuated to the internment camps, she and Henry could only hope that their promise to each other would be kept. Now, forty years later, Henry explores the hotel’s basement for the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot even begin to measure. His search will take him on a journey to revisit the sacrifices he has made for family, for love, for country.“An impressive, bitter, and sweet debut that explores the age-old conflicts between father and son, the beauty and sadness of what happened to Japanese Americans in the Seattle era during World War II, and the depths and longing of deep-heart love.”\u003cb\u003e—Lisa See\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A tender and satisfying novel set in a time and a place lost forever, \u003ci\u003eHotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet\u003c\/i\u003e gives us a glimpse of the damage that is caused by war—not the sweeping damage of the battlefield but the cold, cruel damage to the hearts and humanity of individual people. This is a beautifully written book that will make you think. And, more important, it will make you feel.”\u003cb\u003e—Garth Stein, bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Art of Racing in the Rain\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mesmerizing and evocative, a tale of conflicted loyalties and timeless devotion.”\u003cb\u003e—Sara Gruen, bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eWater for Elephants\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A wartime-era Chinese-Japanese variation on \u003ci\u003eRomeo and Juliet\u003c\/i\u003e . . . The period detail [is] so revealing and so well rendered.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Seattle Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A poignant story that transports the reader back in time . . . a satisfying and heart-wrenching tale.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eDeseret Morning News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A lovely combination of romantic coincidence, historic detail and realism that is smooth and highly readable . . . Ford does wonderful work in re-creating prewar Seattle.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Oregonian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Heartfelt . . . a timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don’t repeat those injustices.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ford’s story of an innocent passion across racial barriers—and of the life of a man who forsook the girl he loved—is told with an artistic technique that makes emotion inevitable.”\u003cb\u003e—Louis B. Jones\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A beautiful and tender masterpiece . . . a book everyone will be talking about, and the best book you’ll read this year.”\u003cb\u003e—Anne Frasier\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A heartwarming story of fathers and sons, first loves, fate, and the resilient human heart . . . marvelously evocative.”\u003cb\u003e—Jim Tomlinson\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eJamie Ford\u003c\/b\u003e is the great-grandson of Nevada mining pioneer Min Chung, who emigrated from Kaiping, China, to San Francisco in 1865, where he adopted the Western name “Ford,” thus confusing countless generations. Ford is an award-winning short-story writer, an alumnus of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and a survivor of Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp. Having grown up near Seattle’s Chinatown, he now lives in Montana with his wife and children.\u003cb\u003eThe Panama Hotel (1986)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Old Henry Lee stood transfixed by all the commotion at the  Panama Hotel. What had started as a crowd of curious onlookers eyeballing a television  news crew had now swollen into a polite mob of shoppers, tourists, and a few punk-looking  street kids, all wondering what the big deal was. In the middle of the crowd stood  Henry, shopping bags hanging at his side. He felt as if he were waking from a long  forgotten dream. A dream he’d once had as a little boy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The old Seattle landmark  was a place he’d visited twice in his lifetime. First when he was only twelve years  old, way back in 1942—“the war years” he liked to call them. Even then the old bachelor  hotel had stood as a gateway between Seattle’s Chinatown and Nihonmachi, Japantown.  Two outposts of an old-world conflict—where Chinese and Japanese immigrants rarely  spoke to one another, while their American-born children often played kick the can  in the streets together. The hotel had always been a perfect landmark. A perfect  meeting place—where he’d once met the love of his life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The second time was today.  It was 1986, what, forty-plus years later? He’d stopped counting the years as they  slipped into memory. After all, he’d spent a lifetime between these bookended visits.  A marriage. The birth of an ungrateful son. Cancer, and a burial. He missed his wife,  Ethel. She’d been gone six months now. But he didn’t miss her as much as you’d think,  as bad as that might sound. It was more like quiet relief really. Her health had  been bad—no, worse than bad. The cancer in her bones had been downright crippling,  to both of us, he thought.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e For the last seven years Henry had fed her, bathed her,  helped her to the bathroom when she needed to go, and back again when she was all  through. He took care of her night and day, 24\/7 as they say these days. Marty, his  son, thought his mother should have been put in a home, but Henry would have none  of it. “Not in my lifetime,” Henry said, resisting. Not just because he was Chinese  (though that was a part of his resistance). The Confucian ideal of filial piety—respect  and reverence for one’s parents—was a cultural relic not easily discarded by Henry’ s generation. He’d been raised to care for loved ones, personally, and to put someone  in a home was unacceptable. What his son, Marty, never fully understood was that  deep down there was an Ethel-shaped hole in Henry’s life, and without her, all he  felt was the draft of loneliness, cold and sharp, the years slipping away like blood  from a wound that never heals.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Now she was gone for good. She needed to be buried,  Henry thought, the traditional Chinese way, with food offerings, longevity blankets,  and prayer ceremonies lasting several days—despite Marty’s fit about cremating her.  He was so modern. He’d been seeing a counselor and dealing with his mother’s death  through an online support group, whatever that was. Going online sounded like talking  to no one, which Henry had some firsthand experience in—in real life. It was lonely.  Almost as lonely as Lake View Cemetery, where he’d buried Ethel. She now had a gorgeous  view of Lake Washington, and was interred with Seattle’s other Chinese notables,  like Bruce Lee and his own son, Brandon. But in the end, each of them occupied a  solitary grave. Alone forever. It didn’t matter who your neighbors were. They didn’ t talk back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When night fell, and it did, Henry chatted with his wife, asking her  how her day was. She never replied, of course. “I’m not crazy or anything,” Henry  would say to no one, “just open-minded. You never know who’s listening.” Then he’ d busy himself pruning his Chinese palm or evergreen—houseplants whose brown leaves  confessed his months of neglect. But now he had time once again. Time to care for  something that would grow stronger for a change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Occasionally, though, he’d wonder  about statistics. Not the cancer mortality rates that had caught up with dear Ethel.  Instead he thought about himself, and his time measured on some life insurance actuarial  table. He was only fifty-six—a young man by his own standards. But he’d read in Newsweek  about the inevitable decline in the health of a surviving spouse his age. Maybe the  clock was ticking? He wasn’t sure, because as soon as Ethel passed, time began to  crawl, clock or no clock.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He’d agreed to an early retirement deal at Boeing Field  and now had all the time in the world, and no one to share the hours with. No one  with whom to walk down to the Mon Hei bakery for yuet beng, carrot mooncakes, on  cool autumn evenings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Instead here he was, alone in a crowd of strangers. A man  between lifetimes, standing at the foot of the Panama Hotel once again. Following  the cracked steps of white marble that made the hotel look more like an Art Deco  halfway house. The establishment, like Henry, seemed caught between worlds. Still,  Henry felt nervous and excited, just like he had been as a boy, whenever he walked  by. He’d heard a rumor in the marketplace and wandered over from the video store  on South Jackson. At first he thought there was some kind of accident because of  the growing size of the crowd. But he didn’t hear or see anything, no sirens wailing,  no flashing lights. Just people drifting toward the hotel, like the tide going out,  pulling at their feet, propelling them forward, one step at a time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As Henry walked  over, he saw a news crew arrive and followed them inside. The crowd parted as camera-shy  onlookers politely stepped away, clearing a path. Henry followed right behind, shuffling  his feet so as not to step on anyone, or in turn be stepped upon, feeling the crowd  press back in behind him. At the top of the steps, just inside the lobby, the hotel’ s new owner announced, “We’ve found something in the basement.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Found what? A body  perhaps? Or a drug lab of some kind? No, there’d be police officers taping off the  area if the hotel were a crime scene.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Before the new owner, the hotel had been boarded  up since 1950, and in those years, Chinatown had become a ghetto gateway for tongs—gangs  from Hong Kong and Macau. The city blocks south of King Street had a charming trashiness  by day; the litter and slug trails on the sidewalk were generally overlooked as tourists  peered up at egg-and-dart architecture from another era. Children on field trips,  wrapped in colorful coats and hats, held hands as they followed their noses to the  mouthwatering sight of barbecue duck in the windows, hanging red crayons melting  in the sun. But at night, drug dealers and bony, middle-aged hookers working for  dime bags haunted the streets and alleys. The thought of this icon of his childhood  becoming a makeshift crack house made him ache with a melancholy he hadn’t felt since  he held Ethel’s hand and watched her exhale, long and slow, for the last time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Precious  things just seemed to go away, never to be had again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As he took off his hat and  began fanning himself with the threadbare brim, the crowd pushed forward, pressing  in from the rear. Flashbulbs went off. Standing on his tippy toes, he peered over  the shoulder of the tall news reporter in front of him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The new hotel owner, a slender  Caucasian woman, slightly younger than Henry, walked up the steps holding . . . an  umbrella? She popped it open, and Henry’s heart beat a little faster as he saw it  for what it was. A Japanese parasol, made from bamboo, bright red and white—with  orange koi painted on it, carp that looked like giant goldfish. It shed a film of  dust that floated, suspended momentarily in the air as the hotel owner twirled the  fragile-looking artifact for the cameras. Two more men brought up a steamer trunk  bearing the stickers of foreign ports: Admiral Oriental Lines out of Seattle and  Yokohama, Tokyo. On the side of the trunk was the name Shimizu, hand-painted in large  white letters. It was opened for the curious crowd. Inside were clothing, photo albums,  and an old electric rice cooker. The new hotel owner explained that in the basement  she had discovered the belongings of thirty-seven Japanese families who she presumed  had been persecuted and taken away. Their belongings had been hidden and never recovered—a  time capsule from the war years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Henry stared in silence as a small parade of wooden  packing crates and leathery suitcases were hauled upstairs, the crowd marveling at  the once-precious items held within: a white communion dress, tarnished silver candlesticks,  a picnic basket—items that had collected dust, untouched, for forty-plus years. Saved  for a happier time that never came.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The more Henry thought about the shabby old  knickknacks, the forgotten treasures, the more he wondered if his own broken heart  might be found in there, hidden among the unclaimed possessions of another time.  Boarded up in the basement of a condemned hotel. Lost, but never forgotten.","brand":"Ballantine Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302270554341,"sku":"NP9780345505347","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345505347.jpg?v=1730750245","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/hotel-on-the-corner-of-bitter-and-sweetisbn-9780345505347","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}