They spent almost five years there, struggling against poverty and shame. Trying to pull together an exhibition of his art, he is drawn into painful memories he has avoided for much of his life.Īfter the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Bin’s Japanese Canadian family was uprooted from the west coast of Vancouver Island and transported to an internment camp in the mountains. But Greg must return to his studies on the East Coast, and Bin finds himself alone in ways he has never imagined.

He and his son, Greg, are left to deal with the shock. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.īin Okuma, a celebrated visual artist, has quite suddenly lost his beloved wife, Lena. With his wife’s persuasive voice in his head and the echo of their love in his heart, Bin embarks on an unforgettable journey into his past that will throw light on a dark time in history. Both running from grief and driving straight toward it, Bin must ask himself whether he truly wants to find First Father, the man who made a fateful decision that almost destroyed his family all those years ago. One hundred miles from the Protected Zone,” they formed makeshift communities without direct access to electricity, plumbing or food for five years.įifty years later, after his wife’s sudden death, Bin travels across the country to find the biological father who has been lost to him. They were allowed to take only the possessions they could carry, and as a young boy Bin was forced to watch as neighbors raided their family home before the transport boats even undocked.

In 1942 the government removed Bin Okuma's family from their home on British Columbia’s west coast and forced them into internment camps. By the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize-winning author of Deafening comes a new historical novel that traces the lives of one Japanese-Canadian family during and after their internment in the 1940s.

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