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Loading... Silent Honor (original 1996; edition 2007)by Danielle Steel
Work InformationSilent Honor by Danielle Steel (1996)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. 8401466407 It has been years since I read a Danielle Steel book but my neighbor recommended this book to me so I decided to give it a try. It took me about 125 pages to get into the story but once I did I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had no idea how the Japanese people living in this country were treated or those of Japanese descent that were born in the U.S. It was very interesting and sad. I thought the ending was rushed a bit and that more detail could have been given on what else had happened to some of the characters. Overall, this is a very good book. I have a lot of respect for Danielle Steel both in terms of her longevity and her ability to write prolifically, and in her willingness to be inclusive in her work. As a Bay Area-based author, she really reflects this community and all who live here, more than others in her romance genre peer group. She's a grand lady. One of the many aspects about Steel I respect is her ability to use her books to uncover prejudice and suspicion around religion, ethnicity, health issues (like AIDS, substance abuse and cancer), or alternate lifestyles. She handles these subjects with a generosity of heart and spirit which speak volumes about her as a human being. This novel, Silent Honor, takes the reader to Japan and the Bay Area before WWII, following a teen aged Japanese girl, Hiroko, who has come to the United States for her first year of college. Steel does a masterful job in exposing the awful conditions imposed on the Japanese in the Bay Area as WWII broke out, then follows them to Tanforan Race Track as the Internment begins, then Tule Lake as the war ended. I believe this is one of her best works. Although Steel sometimes spends a lot of text space explaining her characters, in this novel she allows them to tell their own stories seamlessly. It is really a gem. no reviews | add a review
Distinctions
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel, a moving novel of families separated and lives shattered by prejudice during one of the most shameful episodes in American history. A man ahead of his time, Japanese college professor Masao Takashimaya of Kyoto had a passion for modern ideas that was as strong as his wife's belief in ancient traditions. His eighteen-year-old daughter, Hiroko, torn between her mother's traditions and her father's wishes, boarded the SS Nagoya Maru to come to California for an education and to make her father proud. It was August 1941. From the ship, she went to the Palo Alto home of her uncle, Takeo, and his family. To Hiroko, California was a different world. Her cousins had become more American than Japanese. And much to Hiroko's surprise, Peter Jenkins, her uncle's assistant at Stanford, became an unexpected link between her old world and her new. On December 7, Pearl Harbor is bombed by the Japanese. Within hours, war is declared and suddenly Hiroko has become an enemy in a foreign land. On February 19, Executive Order 9066 is signed by President Roosevelt, giving the military the power to remove the Japanese from their communities at will. Takeo and his family are given ten days to sell their home, give up their jobs, and report to a relocation center, along with thousands of other Japanese and Japanese Americans, to face their destinies there. Families are divided, people are forced to abandon their homes, their businesses, their freedom, and their lives. Danielle Steel portrays not only the human cost of that terrible time in history, but also the remarkable courage of a people whose honor and dignity transcended the chaos that surrounded them. Silent Honor reveals the stark truth about the betrayal of Americans by their own government . . . and the triumph of a woman caught between cultures and determined to survive. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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