Library Calendar

This month's book  is "The Japanese Lover" by Isabel Allende. "The Japanese Lover" is a multi-generational epic that sweeps from San Francisco, in the present day, to Poland and the United States during the Second World War. In 1939, young Alma Belasco's parents send her, from Poland, to live with an aunt and uncle in San Francisco. There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family's Japanese gardener. A great friendship and tender love affair begins to blossom during this 2 year period. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are pulled apart when Ichimei and his family are relocated to internment camps run by the U. S. government. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but they feel forced to hide their love. Decades later, as Alma is nearing the end of her life, Irina Bazili, a care worker struggling to come to terms with her own troubled past, meets the Alma and her grandson, Seth, at San Francisco's charmingly eccentric Lark House nursing home. As Irina and Seth forge their own friendship, they become intrigued by a series of mysterious gifts and letters sent to Alma and they piece together the truth about Ichimei and his relationship  with Alma that has endured for nearly seventy years. Sweeping through time and spanning generations and continents, "The Japanese Lover" explores questions of identity, abandonment and redemption. Written with the same attention to historical detail and keen understanding of her characters that Isabel Allende has been known for since her landmark first novel "The House of the Spirits," "The Japanese Lover" is a tribute to the constancy of the human heart in an ever changing world.

Light refreshments will be served. For more information, please contact the library at 970-479-2187 or libinfo@vailgov.com.