The Buddha in the attic / Julie Otsuka

"This is a Borzoi book."

In eight incantatory sections, The Buddha in the Attic tells the story of a group of young women brought over from Japan to San Francisco as ‘picture brides’ nearly a century ago. It traces their extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war.