5 Star
Los Angeles, 1941.
Violinist Maddie Kern’s life seemed destined to unfold with the
predictable elegance of a Bach concerto. Then she fell in love with Lane
Moritomo. Her brother’s best friend, Lane is the handsome, ambitious
son of Japanese immigrants. Maddie was prepared for disapproval from
their families, but when Pearl Harbor is bombed the day after she and
Lane elope, the full force of their decision becomes apparent. In the
eyes of a fearful nation, Lane is no longer just an outsider, but an
enemy.
When her
husband is interned at a war relocation camp, Maddie follows,
sacrificing her Juilliard ambitions. Behind barbed wire, tension simmers
and the line between patriot and traitor blurs. As Maddie strives for
the hard-won acceptance of her new family, Lane risks everything to
prove his allegiance to America, at tremendous cost.
Kathryn - 5 Star
The Bridge of Scarlet Leaves was truly fantastic but to be truthful I found it
difficult to really sink in to at first.
I’m not sure if this was because I was confused by the introduction of
the characters or if I just had a hard time connecting them to each other. It didn’t take long though for me to fall in
love with Maddie and Lane and it was only a few chapters in before I
desperately wanted for everything to work out for them when everything seemed set
up for them to fail.
One thing I found really interesting was the tiny, seemingly
insignificant, fact that McMorris didn’t have parental figures for Maddie and
her brother to lean- it made the conflict at the start of the novel very easy
for anyone to understand. As their
mother had been killed in a car accident and their father had been unable to
communicate since her death, TJ was trying to become the father figure and ensure
Maddie’s reputation. Maddie meanwhile was
trying to hide that she was dating TJ’s best friend Lane- who also happened to
be Japanese-American. Maddie and TJ
pulled away from each other rather than came together and this created a
natural rift in their relationship. This
of course led to Lane and TJ also losing their friendship. Instead of supporting each other they pushed
each other away and this led neatly to the rest of the story.
The time period is fascinating to me and I found that I was
really hungry for details of the detainment of the Japanese during WWII. I didn’t really know much about it, except
that it happened, and I think the author really intertwined it well with the love
story without lessening its importance in history or making it so heavy with
detail that we lost sight of Maddie and Lane.
I loved the details given about Lane’s family- his mother, sister and
even his father were special to me.
Be warned that a portion of the second half of the Bridge of Scarlet Leaves has
some difficult passages to read, so between the joyful moments there were a few
things I had to force myself through but McMorris is certainly a talented
writer and I enjoyed this novel so much I couldn’t put it down.
Thank you to Kensington Books for our review copy! All opinions are our own.
Connect with Kristina McMorris:
No comments:
Post a Comment