What the scarecrow said
Subtitle: A Novel
By: Stewart David Ikeda.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Regan Books
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 445
Subjects: World War, 1939-1945 -- Massachusetts -- Fiction.; Japanese American families -- Fiction.; Japanese Americans -- Fiction.; Friendship -- Fiction.; Massachusetts -- Fiction.
First sentence: The statue of a Union soldier pointed a thick finger up the hill called Widow's Peak, his head slightly skyward, and back --- yearning, sniffing for traces of the eastern sea breeze spilling over the cliffs of Cape Ann, but forever facing the wrong way.
Description: Stewart David Ikeda's epic novel begins with the perilous birth of its hero. William Fujita, aboard a steamer bound for America in 1897 and ends in the aftermath of a great national shame: the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. At the outbreak of World War II, Fujita is torn from his beloved family nursery in Pasadena and exiled to a prison camp where he is beset by an almost unbearable loss. Barred from his home, a grief-stricken Fujita relocates to New England, where he and two widows, Margaret and Livvie, and Livvie's young son, Garvin, attempt to turn the harsh and unforgiving landscape of Widow's Peak, Massachusetts, into functioning farmland. Lavishly praised and masterfully written, What the Scarecrow Said is an expansive, multilayered story of family, reconciliation, and the cost of America's war on its own people. In this impressive debut novel, Stewart David Ikeda proves how even in the harshest soil the roots of community, love, and family can thrive.