Angela Davis-GardnerReviews

One of the best books I've read in a very long time...

Barbara Jefferson is an American teaching in Japan, and her professor, Michi, who was like a mother to her, died and leaves her a tansu chest full of plum wine. Each bottle of wine was made in a different year and has a paper wrapped aorund it with the story of that year written on it in Japanese. It's an odd inheritance for Barbara, who doesn't speak or read Japanese. She wants to read the story and know more about Michi, as she realizes she didn't know that much about her personally, although she was close to her in many ways.

An acquaintance of Michi's and fellow hibakusha (survivor of the Hiroshima bombing), Seiji, a moody and talented pottery artist, helps Barbara translate the papers. Their relationship grows, and with it, brings confusion to Barbara's world.

I liked and disliked this book. The interweaving of the stories about "kitsune," Japanese folklore about foxes, the stories of the hibakusha, and descriptions of Japan give the story great atmosphere and transport you to Japan. So those are the good points of hte book. But, as the cover says in one of its critic review, "A heartrending story of love and loss . . . .masterful."

There were a few standout scenes in the book. Michi and Barbara's visit to the Buddha of Kamakura, and feeling they were in the womb of the Buddha was interesting and provided a great backdrop for conversations about mothers and relationships. I liked Barbara's speculation about her mother's feelings: "My mother always wanted a daughter like her, someone adventurous but conventional. A suit-and-pants kind of woman who takes flying lessons."

This book that has been on my to read shelf for a couple of years, but it was not until this month that I decided to pick it up. The reason? My daughter just made her role debut in the opera Madama Butterfly!! The book became a must read NOW! I agree with other reviewers that the author did a good job of painting a picture of Midwest farm life and attitudes in the late 19th century, as well as researching both the time and place of both the US and Japan during this period. I encourage others to read interviews with the author about that aspect of the writing process. I was totally surprised by the final outcome of the novel and felt the author did a great job of capturing the reactions and feelings of the central characters. I highly recommend this book.

Felice. Angela Davis-Gardner. 1982. I really enjoyed the author’s Plum Wine, and expected to like this novel, after all it was set in a Catholic school/convent in Nova Scotia! It moved a little slow for me. We move in between Felice’s imagination and her reality as she grows from a child into a young adult. She is torn between the religious life and life outside the convent. The writing is beautiful, and I loved the descriptions of convent life and life in Scotia in the early 20th century, but did not find this book as satisfying I’d hoped.

Plum Wine. Angela Davis-Gardner. 2006. Friend Lorie suggested this book, and I am so glad. It is a beautifully written love story! Barbara Jefferson is teaching English at a university in Tokyo. Michi, Barbara’s neighbor, mentor, and dear friend dies unexpectedly and leaves her a tansu chest filled with 20 bottles of wine dated by year. Each bottle is wrapped in rice paper that is covered with Japanese writing. Michi must have wanted Barbara to learn her history by reading this odd journal. At a memorial service for Michi, Barbara meets Seiji who had known Michi for years. He agrees to translate. They must meet secretly. It is not proper in 1960s Japan for the American teacher to meet with a man. As they fall in love, Barbara realizes there is more to Seiji’s relationship with Michi that he has told her. In addition to being a lovely love story, the books provides glimpse of life and culture in Japan in the aftermath of Hiroshima.

This is one of my favorite books I have read for my book club. It is set in the 1960's at a women's university in Tokyo. The main character, Barbara is teaching English at this school. She has a wonderful, older friend named Michiko who leaves her a chest full of plum wine upon her death. On each bottle of wine is wrapped a writing of what has happened the previous year. Helping her to translate is Sejii who has some secrets of his own. The book moves back and forth in time. Many family stories are uncovered, especially about the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

This was an easy read, but at the same time I think it has many points for discussion. It certainly wasn't a light read. It had much turning pages quickly (or clicks as I read it on my kindle).

One of the best things about the books was the atmosphere and language. The author did an amazing job of making one feel like you were in Japan.

If you like you books tied neatly, with all questions answered you may be a little frustrated by this book.

I loved this book and I think many people would like it too. I had never heard of this author before but I'd like to read more books by her.

i thought it was kind of dry and boring but my book club really liked it

This novel, set in Japan in the 60s, is definitely on the minimalist side. It’s the story of Barbara, a woman from North Carolina, who goes to Japan to teach for a few years. The constant slight confusion of the protagonist is very familiar to me, since I’ve also experienced a lot of culture shock in my life.

The story that’s grafted onto this doesn’t feel entirely natural, but it is heartfelt. Barbara is befriended by Michi, a Japanese teacher who is like a mother to her, and when Michi dies, Barbara inherits her chest of stories. Looking for a translator for the writing, Barbara falls in love with Seiji, a Japanese man, a potter. Both Michi and Seiji lived in Hiroshima when the bomb fell, both lost their families, and both remained wounded.

From her exploration of Michi’s life, and from her growing and then fading intimacy with Seiji, Barbara learns what it means to be a survivor of Hiroshima. The US Vietnam War is also part of the story, as Barbara must explain it to her students.

The novel is written very plainly, one might even say in a Japanese style. Everything is suggested rather than spoken. But at times it feels too sparse, and the prose seems utilitarian rather than poetic.

I found this book at a library sale. I enjoy getting books I have never heard of at library sales, maybe partly because of the risk involved. It sounded good: a suspense novel about a young American woman teaching in Japan. Lee Smith called it “memorable” on the cover. I like reading about foreign settings. I myself applied to teach for a year in Japan once, and ended up teaching for a year in France.

In this book review I must be diligent to apply John Updike’s six rules for reviewers, which are well worth reading and following.

Plum Wine is not the book I hoped it would be. It has many merits, such as describing the effects of the atomic bomb on the people who lived in Hiroshima. I learned more than I knew about that particular experience.

The premise is intriguing: a woman who dies mysteriously and bequeaths her scroll-diaries to the American teacher Barbara, who then has to make sense of the gift. It is cute to read about the Japanese people’s efforts to pronounce her name—”Balabala.” But is the book as good as it could be, given what it is? It is hard to pin down what is lacking.

Some of the things that annoy me most about the book are actually very true to life. I was frustrated with the main character because she makes only the most meager, half-hearted efforts to learn Japanese, even though her failure to do so isolates her and magnifies all her problems. However, this seems to be very common among short-term American expatriates.

She has a superficial relationship with the people around her and doesn’t seek their guidance in very important matters. But I experienced a similar estrangement when I lived in France. It was hard for me to obtain guidance from the French people I knew. Whether it is caused by pride or by cultural barriers, this is realistic.

Barbara develops an intense devotion to a Japanese lady she seems to have known only very slightly. This seems contrived to the reader, but it is true that when you are all alone in a foreign country, you can become strongly attached to the people you are thrown together with, especially the other expatriates, without knowing much about their identity back home. We cannot blame the main character for caring deeply about someone she didn’t know very well.

Maybe the most unpleasant thing for me was reading about her unhealthy relationship with a Japanese man. Here Barbara is beginning to get to know Seiji better:

“Would you be interested to see my new work?”
She followed him into the pottery. There were several pieces laid out on a table. All of them had a jagged, unfinished look, a primal quality. “I have made by hand instead of on wheel,” he said as she touched the sharp edges.
“They’re powerful,” she said. “Strongly emotional.”
“Perhaps because I think of you as I make them,” he said. She took his hand and kissed it; he’d never expressed his feelings so openly before.

Of course he turns out to be exactly the kind of cad you sense he is in this passage, and the innocent American girl walks right into his trap. I suppose the story has been repeated over and over again around the world for centuries. It is true and lifelike, I am sure. But I felt like I was taken to a foreign country and then kept in a small room, taken out rarely to see only a few blurry scenes of that world.

I just finished Butterfly's Child.
I was surprised to discover that this book is the continuation of the story of Madame Butterfly.
I found the first 100 pages of the book difficult, not because they weren't written well, because they were, but because I didn't like any of the characters and that included the unfortunate little boy. I understand his life was turned on its head, but I felt to pity for him after a certain point. Then toward the 100th page I did and that's when the book picked up.
It's a nice read and causes you to want to know how this all plays out.
The ending is satisfying and if you're willing to trudge through the 100 pages is worth the read.

Recently I've been dealing with a lot of stress and tragedy in my personal life, so a book with a tragic central premise would not have been my first pick. Frankly, if I didn't have to review this one, I probably wouldn't have picked it up -- and I would have lost out on a truly moving, deliciously sad read.

Inspired by Puccini's opera, Madame Butterfly, the story is set in the late 1890s and follows Benji, a half-Japanese, half-American boy born to a Nagasaki geisha, Cio-Cio. He's adopted at age five when his father, Frank Pinkterton, returns to Japan on his honeymoon with his American wife, Kate. Upon learning of Frank's abandonment of her, Cio-Cio kills herself and begs Frank to take care of their son. Frank and Kate conspire to hide Benji's true birth, and they invent a story about seeing him at a Christian orphanage and being moved to adopt him. They return to their Illinois farm where they live with Frank's mother, the eyes of this small town on them. You can imagine what drama unfolds.

I was very apprehensive about how Davis-Gardner would handle Kate, Frank's wife. I anticipated hating Frank and wanting to take Kate's side, but I am not so stony-hearted as to hate a child, and so I felt some immediate sympathy for Benji. Davis-Gardner felt the same way, I think, for all her characters behaved rather humanly -- and humanely -- and I found myself rather fond and sympathetic of everyone, even Frank (well, maybe not Frank). Kate was my favorite character by far: a missionary's daughter, she grew up in China and had a fondness for the 'Orient', and it was her idea they honeymoon in Japan. It was that trip that led to their discovery of Frank's child, and she understandably waffles throughout the book as to how she feels about Benji, her marriage, and her husband.

The novel explores Benji's childhood and his own search for family, and the way loss seems to beget more loss. There's a twist later in the book that I suspect will split readers, but as sort of improbable as it might be, it worked for me, as it had an operatic feel to it. (Operas have some of the most over-the-top plot twists around.)

You don't need to be familiar with the opera to appreciate this story. Not only does Davis-Gardner include a summary of the opera, but her novel stands alone -- she sets up the whole story within the first chapter, and I dare anyone not to be sucked in. This isn't a fan fic of the opera, either, but a very real examination of adoption, identity, love, depression, and early 20th century farm life. There's a blurb from Jennifer Egan on the back, about how the book "dominated" her thoughts after finishing, and I have to agree: this isn't a book I could shake off. I chewed it over, savored the sadness, and wondered at what could have been done differently. (This would make a great book club selection!)

When you read a marvelous book and you close that last page, have you ever had the characters continue to live on in your head, going beyond the end of the tale the author told, living lives no one else has ever imagined? This certainly happens to me although not as much as it used to when I was younger. And it clearly happens for people who write fan fiction and sequels. Obviously the same thing happened for Angela Davis-Gardner and as a result of her inability to leave Cio-Cio and Pinkerton's small child tragically orphaned on the stage at the end of the opera Madame Butterfly, we have her marvelous and engrossing novel Butterfly's Child.

As in the opera, the novel opens with Cio-Cio waiting for Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton's return to Japan, convinced that he will in fact come back to her and the son he never knew he had. But when he does return, it is with an American wife. Butterfly commits hairi-kiri out of love and desperation and Pinkerton and his devout wife Kate are left to decide young biracial Benji's fate. They choose to take him back to Illinois with them to their farm but instead of Pinkerton's claiming paternity, they say that Benji is an orphan whom they've adopted as is their Christian duty.

Life is not easy on the farm. Pinkerton never planned to work on it, Kate wasn't raised as a farm wife, and Benji is desperately afloat in a culture he doesn't trust with people he doesn't know and who are having a hard time caring for him emotionally given the way he remains a constant reminder of Butterfly for both Pinkertons. Without the love and caring at home to build his sense of worth, the petty racism he encounters daily in the small town is terribly isolating. Only a few people treat him as a full, intelligent human being. And so he never stops dreaming of leaving Illinois and going back to Japan to find his mother's family. When the secret of his paternity leaks out in this provincial and small-minded town, the repercussions tear the Pinkerton family apart and Benji runs away to make his long desired journey back to Japan.

The historical detail and accuracy of attitudes and beliefs are fantastic here. Davis-Gardner really captures the difficulty of being bi-racial at the turn of the 20th century, not only in the US but also in Japan. The hardship of working on a farm over tough years is realistically depicted. The Japanese areas of larger American cities are carefully detailed and brought to life. The casual racism of the time threads through Benji's everyday life just exactly as it would have, touching and soiling so much.

In Benji, Davis-Gardner has created a sad, woeful character whose search for identity and acceptance is all external until he realizes that only by finding himself within will he finally be at ease in a world not amenable to people like him. Pinkerton is a fairly loathesome character and just as in the opera, the reader wonders what both Cio-Cio and then Kate could ever have seen in the man. Kate is very buttoned-up and constrained and she tries her hardest but she ultimately finds herself unable to rise above the prejudices of the day and her eventual succumbing to deep depression is a not unexpected fate for her. Pinkerton's mother, while gruff, is one of the more sympathetic characters as is Keast, the veterinarian who takes a real and heartfelt interest in Benji.

The plot, starting with the end of the opera and growing from there, has a desultory feel to it, unspooling slowly toward a series of surprising climaxes. Benji's life in American with his father and stepmother draws out far longer than his adult life in Japan although the latter is equally as, or even more, interesting than his farm years. Just as Benji left them behind, Frank and Kate's stories are wrapped up tidily and fairly quickly in the end, the more interesting secondary characters are briefly mentioned, and the focus is solely on Benji again and the losses he's chosen to accept by only being one half of his heritage. A thoughtful and appealing tale that not only takes inspiration from the opera but also cleverly incorporates it into the tale itself, this search for self was a delight to read.

Madame Butterfly, the famous opera by Puccini is the driving force behind Butterfly's Child, the novel (the opera being based on a short story.) Ms. Davis-Gardner imagines the story behind the opera and presents it as it might have happened.

From the beginning there is a feeling of both despair and hope mixed into the writing. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, a naval officer has his affair with Cio-Cio (Butterfly) and he leaves not knowing of the birth of his son. Butterfly sits waiting, knowing that he will return. He sends her money every month so he must care! When he does return though, it is on his honeymoon. In despair Butterfly sends a note to Frank and he arrives at her home to find her dead at her own hand with little Benji wailing. He and his wife decide to take the boy back to America and raise him as an orphan child they adopted while in Japan.

Frank arrives back in America to take over the family farm. Benji is not warmly welcomed into the community. His obvious mixed race leads to bullying from both children and adults as he grows up; only a few people people embrace him. He clings to the few reminders he has of a childhood he barely remembers.

Secrets never stay secrets forever and Benji's comes out to the detriment of all involved. Benji leaves determined to go back "home" to Japan but he learns along the way that he does not fit in there any more than he fits in with his American family. He must forge his place in life as he searches for the family he was forced to leave.

This story of cultures clashing with an innocent child caught in the middle was well written and I found it hard to put down. Benji was an enterprising, enjoyable character. I was disappointed that his time in Japan and the ending seemed somewhat short changed compared to his time with his father in America. Once he finds his way to his place of birth the story seemed to lose its momentum. The detail so prevalent in the beginning was missing I suppose. Many questions were left unanswered so I do wonder if a sequel is planned and perhaps that is the reason.

It was overall a fascinating look at small town America and its attitude towards Japan at the end of the 19th century. Not to mention the city vs. farm social structures and attitudes.

I absolutely loved "Plum Wine," so of course I was hoping for something equally as wonderful. The premise of this most recent novel is an interesting one: it starts at the end of the story of "Madame Butterfly" and imagines what might have happened to the half-American, half-Japanese child that went off to America with Pinkerton after Butterfly has killed herself. After such a tragedy, how could things turn out well for this child (Benji), or even for Pinkerton and his new wife?

As the reader finds out over the course of the novel, Benji has to overcome a series of cultural shocks as well as ambivalent parents and his main goal in life is to return to Japan to find his real family; Pinkerton is not only overwhelmed by the unexpected guilt he feels upon Butterfly's suicide but he also has to deal with a new life that he is totally unsuited for; and Kate, Pinkerton's new wife, is bewildered by Pinkerton's sudden change in behavior and feels incapable of adequately caring for his child.

All that is plenty of fodder for a good story, but then things take a surreal turn when the opera "Madame Butterfly" debuts in Italy and begins to tour through the United States. The life of the Pinkertons becomes intolerable as they become the focus of small town gossip.

Although this is a fairly well-written book, at times it feels a bit gimmicky, and the characters seem a bit cartoonish.

Barbara Jefferson is a young American teaching at a Japanese school in the late 1960's. She forms a strong attachment to a fellow teacher who dies under questionable circumstances and turns out to have been a survivor of Hiroshima. As the story unfolds, Barbara meets and falls in love with a Japanese man. The mysterious connection between her lover and her dead friend is a mystery, the clues to which are hidden in a series of writings or journals which have been left to her by her friend. Davis-Gardner uses her story to give the reader some insight into the lasting tragedy that followed Hiroshima and, without making moral judgments about the war, at least grants a gentle perspective that Americans do not often see. Her depictions of Japanese life are delicate and seem very genuine. Altogether, a very nice book.½

I enjoyed this book about a young teacher at a college for women in Japan. Angela Davis-Gardner, the author, introduces us into a very sad world of which we, as Americans, are probably not even aware. It is the world of the victims of Hiroshima.

Although the main story appears to be in the late 1960's, it takes us back to that horrible August day 1945, in Hiroshima, where we learn of the atomic blast from several of those who experienced it. The fallout from that blast is still taking its toll on the characters of the main story.

a sweet story of an American woman teaching in Japan in 1966, and how she learns about Japan through the New Year's writings left to her by a Japanese friend. These writings, spanning four decades, lead her to a love affair and a deeper understanding of the legacy of the Hiroshima bombing and a little of her own relationship with her family in the US.

While the events and their outcome are not surprising, they are satisfying. The images of Japan and the description of the culture as seen through the eyes of the protagonist are lovingly recounted. And the occasional struggle of people to understand each other across the language divide is rendered with great tenderness.

An American woman in Tokyo during the time when America is involved in Vietnam, teaches English to students at the Kodaira College and finds that her friend has bequeathed a chest of plum wine to her following her death. As she opens the drawers, she finds each bottle tagged with the year, but also wrapped in paper which she discovers to contain Japanese calligraphy which she is unable to read.

She meets a potter who knew her friend, Michi Nakamoto, well and decides to ask him to translate the writings. Therein she soon discovers more than she had expected. She is drawn into the shadowy world of the Hiroshima survivors and the tragic consequences the atom bomb had on human lives on that fateful day. These survivors are considered ill-fated and some of them choose not to disclose the fact that they are from Hiroshima for fear of being shunned by other members of society.

The letters take her back to stories about Michi's grandmother Ko, Michi's mother and Michi's daughter. There is a surprising twist to the family history, and perhaps a quest that requires a friend to close. The stories are delicately told and offer such a depth of expression and feeling that one cannot help but be drawn into the human drama that unfolded in that year.

There are many wonderful expressions in this book, and none more poignant than the potter describing how, as a 12 year old who survived the bomb, he looked at shadow prints (pieces of ground cut out around shadowy figures) to try identify if his sister and father had cast these 'shadows' if they had been incinerated in the blast.

A forbidden love affair develops between the teacher and the secretive potter. I'm not going to hand out a spoiler as to the outcome of this love affair, but the ending was very touching.

The teacher, through the letters and through her interactions with one of her students, evolves gradually and finds she can no longer hide behind an apathy towards both the bombing of Hiroshima and America's involvement in the Vietnam war.

This is a wonderfully quiet book... quiet because the author has managed to capture the essence of the Japanese and their social dictates. The details of life in Japan in the 70s is particularly resonant.

Beryl's coming-of-age story centers around her life as a step-daughter, but her longing for her real father never ends. Her clear memory of her father waking her early to feed the pony the day he walks away from the family haunts her. Now her mother insist that her new husband, Jack, has saved them. However, he gives inconsistent messages by harshly criticizing her mother, while her brother, Stevie, seems to be losing himself in religion, and her mother becomes more and more obsessed with needing Jack's praise. Beryl's physical shelter comes from her tree house in the back yard, where she finds herself being an observer in her family's life. This dysfunctional family slowly implodes and Beryl becomes caught in the center of it all.

This love story confronts the issues of how our own personal pain from past experience affects our ability to love in the future. The setting of this book takes you to post Hiroshima Japan. The affects on the people of this place and how it has affected others around the world. Not only does it look at war it also embraces the issues that are placed on children who are not given the love that most children take for granted. Sometimes we can overcome our past and sometimes we cannot. I especially liked the setting of Japan and the descriptions of the beauty of the land. Being able to have a small window into the world of another culture was a pleasure for me. While this was a Love Story it was more about our ability to look at what responsibility we each have to take in our own personal decisions. I believe this to be the best part of this book. While the stories themselves were adequate it was the ability to cause the reader to explore their own feelings regarding themselves and the world that truly made it worth the read.

Twenty years after the bombing of Hiroshima, Barbara Jefferson is a young American woman teaching English Lit. at a woman's college in Tokyo. Her interest in Japan stems from her mother's stint in Japan as a journalist the late 30's as means of resolving the distance in their mother-daughter relationship. Instead she finds Michi, another college professor who takes Barbara in and "mothers" her, helping her navigate Japanese culture.

The book opens with Michi's death and bequest to Barbara: a mysterious tansu (chest) of homemade plum wine, each bottle wrapped in a Japanese manuscript. The manuscripts are New Years letters of Michi and her mother.

The narrative revolves around Michi, though she is the absent character throughout the book. Michi, a survivor of Hiroshima and mother of a recently deceased microcephalic daughter (a result of the radiation from the bomb), has also had a strained relationship with her own mother. The circumstances of her life and death are a mystery that Barbara intends to solve. She enlists the help of a potter, Seiji, also a Hiroshima survivor, in translating the manuscripts. They predictably become romantically involved.

Barbara's female students and fellow female professors provide her with insights and warnings along the way. The book, and the relationship between Barbara and Seiji end shortly after the 20th anniversary commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima.

Strong themes through the book are:
- Japanese Kitsune (fox) folklore which often attributes fox characteristics to women, but perhaps the fox in this book is not the female.
- the concept of sin and redemption (Western culture) vs. shame and guilt (Eastern culture).
-the social plight of the victims of war.

Despite these themes, this is not a deep philosophical story but rather an enjoyable read as a mystery romance.

Barbara Jefferson, who is teaching English in Japan, receives an intriguing bequest at the start of this novel. A fellow professor, with whom she has had a budding friendship, has just died and left her a chest full of plum wine. Barbara discovers writing on each of the bottle wrappers and learns that these are the New Year reflections of her colleague and her colleague's mother.

In an attempt to translate these writings, she contacts Seiji, a potter who seems to have been a family friend of Barbara's deceased professor-friend. Unsurprisingly, a sort of romance develops between the two as they delve into the New Year writings -- writings which tell the story of Hiroshima and what it is like to be a survivor of that terrible bombing.

However, the relationship refuses to progress, as Seiji, also a survivor of the bombing, is obviously holding something back, and Barbara wants too much of him. While the bits about Hiroshima are interesting, the relationship between these two is infuriating. Not only because of its lack of progress, but because Barbara is so often whiny and needy, and Seiji runs so hot and cold that one wonders why on Earth Barbara doesn't tell him to take a hike.

Some of the events going on around Barbara are rather fascinating, too. For instance, a Japanese perspective on Vietnam, and a really great subplot involving one of Barbara's more radical students.

However, it fails as a love story, and, disappointingly, I didn't learn as much about Japanese pottery as I though I might either. Perhaps I am not the best judge of this, but this book seemed to lack a sort of distinct Japanese-ness that I've come to expect from similar novels as well.

For a Hiroshima story, I would recommend The Street of a Thousand Blossoms instead. (It also, come to think of it, has much better romances in it as well.) For something with a more Western perspective on Japanese culture (wherein, by the way, one does actually learn something about Japanese pottery, and tea ceremony), I would recommend The Tea House Fire. I'm not sure I'd recommend Plum Wine, however, for much of anything.½

This was a slow-starting but good book about an American woman teaching in Japan. She inherits a box of plum wine from a mother-figure (fellow teacher) who has died. Around each bottle of wine is a letter corresponding to the year the wine was made. The woman needs a translator to discover the history she has been left and finds one in a potter who is also a survivor of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
What follows is a love story and an unfolding of the dead womans life, teaching the American about Japanese culture and opening her eyes to the lasting effects of atomic war.½

American goes to Japan to teach school in 1969. She learns about the effects of the Atom Bomb has on the citizens of that community.

Reviewed by Mrs. Foley

Lt. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton and his devout wife, Kate, bring three-year-old Benji from Nagasaki to live with them on their Illinois farm in the late nineteenth century, claiming he is an orphan, but when it becomes known that Benji is the son of Benjamin and a geisha, shock runs throughout their entire community, and Benji is freed to explore his own identity and the truth about his mother's death. - Destiny catalog record

I agree with this review from Publisher's Weekly:
Immediately engaging, this quiet and measured sequel to Puccini's Madame Butterfly begins with the dramatic detente of Puccini's opera: Cio-Cio-san (Butterfly) kills herself when Pinkerton, the father of her son, Benji, returns with an American wife after four years away. Benji then travels with his father and stepmother to flat central Illinois, the polar opposite of Japan, to begin a life of hard farm labor, becoming an outsider within his family and community. Though Davis-Garner (Plum Wine) inherited her characters, they are complex, dimensional beings in her hands. There are no stock villains, perfect heroes, or tragic victims; as Benji grows up and we follow his journey in search of the family, descended from samurai, that supposedly awaits his return to Japan, the author traces the sad descent of Benji's stepmother into madness and father into alcoholism, without being trite or moralistic. Though some of the tension drains from the plot in the book's middle, Davis-Gardner reaps most of the dramatic benefits of Puccini's plot while simultaneously creating an unrushed meditation on character.