This book is a historical testimony, full of drama and mature wisdom. After the outbreak of World War II, the traditional life of ethnic Japanese in America was destroyed. They turned into enemies of the state. Some of them were arrested, others were expelled from the country, and others were interned in camps. This is what happens with the heroes of Otsuka: the father was detained, and the mother and two children were sent to Utah, to a barracks behind barbed wire. But what next? Will the time of tender warm days, blue skies, green lawns in front of the porch - the sweet everyday life whose value is realized only when you have lost everything - ever return? Turning to her family's past, Julie Otsuka shows with incredible skill how the difficult pages of history are overcome by life itself, which has everything: routine, fear, despair, beauty and reunion after a long separation.