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A review by ibeforem
Daughter of Moloka'i by Alan Brennert
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Daughter of Moloka'i is the follow-up to Brennert's fantastic Moloka'i, which was about the leper colony on the island of Moloka'i in Hawaii. Two of the isolated patients on that island, Rachel and Kenji, give birth to a baby named Ruth, who must almost immediately be taken away so she doesn't contract leprosy from her parents. When this story opens, Ruth is being delivered to the Kapi’olani Home for Girls.
As a young girl, it seems like Ruth would find adoptive parents with little trouble, but because she is half-Hawaiian and half-Japanese, she is often overlooked by the Hawaiian couples looking to adopt. Then she meets a Japanese couple who are looking for a little girl to join their three boys, and her life is changed forever.
By the time World War II happens, Ruth is a married woman with two children of her own, still close to her adoptive family and living in California in an area already thick with anti-Japanese sentiment. Then Pearl Harbor happens, and before they know it they are being whisked away to internment camps, forced to give up their businesses and their homes and their pets and most of their belongings.
This part of the story was the most interesting to me, because despite all of the books I've read about World War II, I've never read one that was about the internment camps, how they worked, and the things that happened there. Brennert is known for his thorough research, and this book is no exception. It's breath-takingly terrible what happened to an entire group of people united only be race, simply because they looked different enough to be easily identified. More than once the sentiment "why is this happening to us, but not German or Italian people?" is expressed, and it made me sit up and say, "Yeah, why is that?" (Even though we all know the true answer.)
After the internment ends and life starts to approach something more normal, Ruth gets another surprise. She receives a letter from her birth mother, offering answers to questions Ruth never knew she had. Should she meet this woman she never knew but knew existed? Can she let them be a part of their lives?
Brennert writes beautiful historical fiction. I can't wait to see what he comes out with next.
As a young girl, it seems like Ruth would find adoptive parents with little trouble, but because she is half-Hawaiian and half-Japanese, she is often overlooked by the Hawaiian couples looking to adopt. Then she meets a Japanese couple who are looking for a little girl to join their three boys, and her life is changed forever.
By the time World War II happens, Ruth is a married woman with two children of her own, still close to her adoptive family and living in California in an area already thick with anti-Japanese sentiment. Then Pearl Harbor happens, and before they know it they are being whisked away to internment camps, forced to give up their businesses and their homes and their pets and most of their belongings.
This part of the story was the most interesting to me, because despite all of the books I've read about World War II, I've never read one that was about the internment camps, how they worked, and the things that happened there. Brennert is known for his thorough research, and this book is no exception. It's breath-takingly terrible what happened to an entire group of people united only be race, simply because they looked different enough to be easily identified. More than once the sentiment "why is this happening to us, but not German or Italian people?" is expressed, and it made me sit up and say, "Yeah, why is that?" (Even though we all know the true answer.)
After the internment ends and life starts to approach something more normal, Ruth gets another surprise. She receives a letter from her birth mother, offering answers to questions Ruth never knew she had. Should she meet this woman she never knew but knew existed? Can she let them be a part of their lives?
Brennert writes beautiful historical fiction. I can't wait to see what he comes out with next.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism