Julie Otsuka Books in Order

In 1942, a Japanese American family is forced from its Berkeley home into wartime incarceration. Shifting perspectives reveal the mother's, children's, and father's experiences of separation, displacement, and the lasting damage inflicted on their ordinary lives.

Through a collective voice, Japanese picture brides recount their journeys to California and encounters with unfamiliar husbands. Marriage, exhausting work, motherhood, and cultural estrangement shape their lives before wartime hostility threatens the communities they have built.

A crack in a swimming pool disrupts the routines of people who find refuge in daily laps. For Alice, whose memory is fading, losing that sanctuary deepens disorientation as her estranged daughter confronts their troubled relationship.