Why She Left Us

A haunting novel of uncommon emotional power, Why She Left Us weaves in and out of the political persecution and personal tragedies of three generations of a Japanese-American family and exposes the complex, often destructive, bonds of love and honour that tie a family together.

Emi Okada is a young girl who finds herself pregnant and alone on the eve of World War II. She puts her firstborn, Eric, up for adoption but her mother, horrified that Emi has given up her son, finds the boy and brings him home.

When, fifty years after the war, Emi’s other child, Mariko, applies for reparations from the American government for the family’s losses during their internment, she stumbles on more than one family secret. As she tries to unravel the mystery that shrouds the events of the past, and to find her lost brother, Mariko must come to terms with her complicity and her own secrets, as well as her feelings of guilt for being the child Emi chose to keep.

Sparely and exquisitely written, Why She Left Us is a superbly accomplished first novel that illuminates the universal relationships between mothers and their children, while evoking the power of history to affect individual lives.