FROM AMAZON: Set on the island of Okinawa today and during World War II, this deeply moving and evocative novel tells the entwined stories of two teenage girls - an American and an Okinawan - whose lives are connected across 70 years by the shared experience of both profound loss and renewal.

Luz, a contemporary U.S. Air Force brat, lives with her no-nonsense sergeant mother at Kadena Air Base. Luz's older sister, her best friend and emotional center, has died in the Afghan war. Unmoored by her death, unable to lean on her mother, Luz contemplates taking her own life.

In l945, Tamiko has lost everyone - the older sister she idolized and her entire family - and finds herself trapped between the occupying Japanese and the invading Americans whom she has been taught are demons that live to rape.

On an island where the spirits of the dead are part of life and the afterworld reunites you with your family, suicide offers Tamiko the promise of peace. As Luz tracks down the story of her own Okinawan grandmother, she discovers that the ancestral spirits work as readily to save her as they do to help Tamiko find a resting place. And as these two stories unfold and intertwine, we see how war and American occupation have shaped and reshaped the lives of Okinawans.

Read while in Okinawa. Names and places hold more significance and the story feels sharper and more real than ever. Definitely worth rereading. ( )

Wonderfully written and constructed novel that connects two times and multiple lives in a single place through a beautiful collision of nature, tradition, history, and magic.

A family epic about tragedy and healing that moves between the natural and supernatural to great effect. The teenage female voice of Luz is authentic and powerful yet occasionally weak and inexperienced the way teenagers are.

I was struck by the sensuous descriptions of the natural world both in its full glory and when it has been shattered by war.

This book makes me wonder what we've lost in Okinawa. ( )

One of the best books I have read in a long time. Loved it in so many levels. It's portrayal of the destruction of war during the WWII, the profound spirituality of the Okinawans, the two parallel stories, and the link of fates and faiths of the two girls divided by more than half a century . I love to read history through fiction specially if it's a page-turner like this one. But what affected me on a personal level was an image that would stay in my mind forever that I almost cannot say about any other book I have ever read. The image of the pregnant girl who plunges to her death in the sea and conversed with her child in her womb as they wait for the kami to send a corpse so they can steal its soul in order to reunite with their clan in the afterworld without which their souls linger in limbo. Thankyou Sarah Bird I kiss your hand for the sorrowful yet gripping scene that can be applied to any living person's life at a given time speaking metaphorically

This is a departure for Sara that might put her in the literary hall of fame -- Sara is a writer for Texas Monthly and lives in Austin, ( I think?). Thank you Book People for putting this one on my horizon.

This book about Okinawa then and now is beautiful and haunting and wonderful, and I'd like to go hear Sara discuss how she wrote it. It somewhat reminds me of The Good Earth meets Memoirs of a Geisha. Fictional story that promotes the idea of Americans getting in touch with their history and beautifully shows the history of Okinawa even prior to its occupation by Japan and then America. What is family? What is love? How does a young girl know the path to take? How do we deal with loss? What place in our lives do our ancestors have? How does our country matter in our lives? These questions are all raised, as each character encounters life, family, love and country on a grand scale.

Note: it does start slowly with a dual time line of teen angst that is almost wearying. But then bam, it takes off so don't quit it. This is not just another YA pining offering. ( )