Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

When I first began hearing about this book I thought the cover was pretty.  The title made me think it might deal with a chocolate shop in a hotel.  I was mistaken.  The Panama Hotel in Seattle becomes a landmark in Henry Lee’s life of a bittersweet time for him during World War II.  In Henry’s story it serves as a bridge between past and present.

Here’s part of the summary from the inside jacket cover:

In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown.  It has been boarded up for decades, but now the owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during Word War II.  As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple gesture takes Henry back to the 1940s, when his world was a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who was obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American.  While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Ranier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student.  Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship – and innocent love – that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors.  After Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Ford does a wonderful job of offering Henry’s story piecemeal.  The chapter titles always let the reader know which year it takes place and doesn’t give away too much of the chapter contents.  This had to be a bear to edit.  Alternating chapters between the 1940’s and 1980’s would have resulted in chapters that seemed to be never-ending.  These chapters were just right.  Ford (or his editor) was able to find natural stopping and starting points that let the story flow.

Most literature set during World War II is about the Jewish experience or an offshoot of it.  Like Tatiana de Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key, this book reveals another facet to the stories of the people who lived through the war.  The internment camps received only a paragraph or two in my school history books.  Ford delicately weaves fiction with fact during the internment camp scenes.

This isn’t just another World War II novel.  It’s also a novel about a young man learning how to take his first steps towards manhood and the depths of parental love.  Life isn’t always fair.  The love of a parent can be simultaneously freeing and stifling.  And sometimes role models can be found in unlikely places.

I have to give a big thank you to Tracee at Pump Up Your Book Promotions for the review copy of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet and letting me be a stop on Jamie’s tour for the book.  Without her help I would probably have let this good book get away.  Learn more about Jamie Ford at http://www.jamieford.com/.