A Book That Left Me In Tears

It's no secret that I love to read.  Sadly, over the past few years, I have not read nearly as much as I should.  For some reason that changed last summer.  I simply started making it a priority again.

Just as with movies and tv, I'm pretty easy to please and I'm easily entertained.  I usually like the books I choose to read.  Sometimes I even get so "into" the book that I am sad when the book is through.

However, every once in a blue moon, I read a book that touches my soul.  I was crying through the last 30 or so pages of a book I finished this morning.  It was that sweet.

The book is called Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.  

The book is set in Seattle during WWII.  The main character is an American born Chinese boy named Henry.  He becomes best friends with an American born Japanese girl named Keiko.  The two form a friendship and a very innocent love.

It was heart wrenching reading about Henry and Keiko's sadness when Keiko's family, along with thousands of other Japanese families, were relocated to internment camps.  In the story, the family is sent to camp Minidoka in Idaho.

As the war goes on, so do lives and loves.

This was a wonderful story about lost love, family honor, family values, patriotism and sentiments during the war.

I highly recommend it.  I finished the book this morning, and I'm still thinking about it this afternoon.  It's the type of book that you wish had a sequel just so you can find out more about the lives of the characters.

I'm sorry I finished the book.  I'm glad I discovered it in the first place.