The Buddha in the Attic - Julie Otsuka

This excellent short book was more poetry than prose. There's no main character in The Buddha in the Attic, which tells the collective stories of young women brought from Japan in the 1930s to wed men they had never met. Promised lives of ease and comfort in America, most of these women were gravely disappointed, but scratched out a life in the fields of California's agriculture industry until they saved enough (or didn't) to buy a piece of land of their own. 

Or they married shop keepers in the J-towns of the cities in which they arrived and lived their lives serving other Japanese immigrants within a small tight-knit community. Or they served as housemaids to oblivious, or caring, or cruel white people. 

And they had children that died, farmed, prospered, and left them (or didn't). And then they were awarded for their hard work by being rounded up and transported to camps on suspicion of enemy activity. And there their story ends and is taken up by the white people who didn't notice the Japanese until they were gone, carrying forth a half-hearted effort to get answers from the government as to the disappearance of their neighbors.

This little book was so well written and lovely and sad. I really enjoyed it.

4/5 Stars.