by Kate Walbert
First published 2001
When the war reaches into her family, Ellen watches her cousin Randall pack his belongings and prepare for deployment to the Pacific theater. Randall has always been her closest confidant, the one person who understood her completely. Now he will board a ship bound for distant battlefields while she remains behind to navigate the uncertainties of wartime romance and growing up without him. The separation forces Ellen to confront her own desires and disappointments as she moves through a world suddenly emptied of the person who mattered most. Letters arrive sporadically from across the ocean, but they cannot bridge the growing distance between her old life and the woman she is becoming. Set against the backdrop of World War II, this story follows Ellen as she grapples with love, loss, and the painful recognition that some changes cannot be undone.
Genres: romance, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Kyoto
Period: World War II
288 pages · Hardcover · Scribner