Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet Jamie Ford Ballantine I had the pleasure of meeting author Jamie Ford on his recent book tour through the Pacific Northwest and wanted to spread the word about his fantastic first novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. Last week, Hotel reached the New York Times list and is currently in a fifth printing. This book is a classic love story against a much larger story (the removal of the Japanese from Seattle during World War II) and this simple, lyrical, haunting, and beautiful story will stick with you. I don’t give away endings, but it’s something worth reading the book for. In the flashbacks, the protagonist, Henry Lee, twelve years old, is Chinese, but it’s 1942 and the folks living on the West Coast of the United States are feeling just a bit vulnerable. When Henry’s staunchly nationalistic father pins an “I am Chinese” button to his son’s shirt and enrolls him in an all-white prep school, Henry finds himself friendl...
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