Sarah Bird

Modern day Luz is a military dependent living in Okinawa. She's feeling emotionally crushed to the point of suicide by the recent death of her sister, Codie, in Afghanistan. Her family now consists only of Luz and her mother, who is also in Afghanistan on a temporary duty assignment. Luz is alone in a new place and has no family or friends around. Told in parallel with Luz' story is the wrenching tale of Okinawan Tamiko, who was a teenager at the time of the World War II battle of Okinawa. show more In the litany of horrors of World War II, the Battle of Okinawa isn’t well known, but more than 95,000 Japanese and 12,000 Americans were killed, including more than a fourth of Okinawa’s civilian population; more people, in fact, than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

The book starts out with the 1945 suicide of pregnant Tamiko. At first she seems to be a bitter ghost bent on Luz’s destruction for her own ends. As Luz learns more about her past and forges a connection with a local boy named Jake, we start to get some hints about the mysterious relationship between Tamiko and Luz. The book had a bit of a slow start for me and I actually put it aside at one point until I was in the right frame of mind. When I picked it up a second time it wasn't long before I was drawn into the story and couldn't put the book down. I found Tamiko's story line much more compelling than that of Luz but once the story starts rolling you will be intrigued by both.

The Battle of Okinawa is a piece of World War II history rarely explored in fiction and even though parts of it were painful to read in some places, it seemed to be well researched. Above the East China Sea is a profound statement about the sorrow of war and a compelling novel about young women’s lives in a time of war and the love of two sets of sisters seventy years apart. I highly recommend it. show less

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 show more 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 show less

4.5 🌟
I loved this book, even with its obvious problems. Problems? Yes, a white woman writing about a black female Buffalo soldier, and leaving the ending without knowing Wager's and Cathy's fate. Much of it took place in Texas, close to the Rio grande Valley, that is, West Texas, was reminiscent to me of where I grew up, in New Mexico, and the reminder of the Flora and fauna of the area is sweet to me.

Cathy Williams was a captive on a tobacco farm in Missouri when general Phil Sheridan show more took the blacks used as slaves on the farm as contraband. He singled out Cathy to make her his cook's helper. On the way to his camp, riding in a wagon packed with sweet potato and flour confiscated from the plantations burned down, she discovers a dying, wounded soldier lying among the canvas sacks. She nurses him as the wagon rolls along, and though he is near dead by the time they reach camp, they have fallen in love with each other. Though seeing him thrown into a lime-lined grave with other dead soldiers, she asks for his name: Wager Swain.

The story of her disguising herself as a man and enlisting in the U.S.Cavalry as a Buffalo soldier to ride to the west and protect settlements from Indians, is engrossing and well-written. I cringed over and over at the way whites treated the black soldiers who were serving the country that had betrayed them. I wanted The Indians and Blacks to band together to stand up to the whites, who were so wrong. show less

I started this book expecting a standard chick-lit-esque story of a teenage girl yearning to escape the nest and her over-protective mother who can't let go. While that plotline does exist within the book, Sarah Bird has crafted a delightful novel with so many more nuances and layers than that first bare-bones description could convey.

The novel is told from both Cam's (the mom) and Aubrey's (the daughter) perspectives; it also shifts in time over the course of Aubrey's senior year of high show more school. Aubrey's voice is especially well-done - Bird clearly has a very strong awareness of the realities of late adolescence! I found all of the characters to be interesting and well-written, from Cam, the lactaction-consultant/single mom, to Dori, her ageing hippie friend, to Aubrey and Tyler, two teenagers struggling to become individuals in the shadow of so many people's great expectations.

This book was, at turns, laugh-out-loud funny, tender, and even heartbreaking. I think Bird got to the heart of the tough relationship between mother and daughter, and the painful reality that sometimes what we most desperately want is unachievable, and may not be the right thing for us anyway. She explores the many 'gaps' in our lives, and how normal families try to fill them, with gentle humor and compassion.

This is the first book I've read by Sarah Bird, but it won't be the last. I give it 4 stars. show less