Bamboo Wife: A Novel

Pachinko meets Little House on the Prairie in this tale of a Japanese bride who struggles to preserve her heritage while building a new life after following her husband to Nebraska in the early 1900s.

Japan, 1917. Seventeen-year-old Haru is told by her father she is to marry and follow her new husband to America. She believes her stay in America will be brief, unaware that her husband’s family borrowed heavily to send him to America and, as a matter of honor, the debt must be repaid before they can ever return to Japan to live.

For years, Haru and her family struggle in poverty. After finally sending two children back to Japan to live with her in-laws, her one goal becomes reuniting her family. But grasshoppers and the Dust Bowl descend on Nebraska—and when Pearl Harbor is bombed, she finds herself with one son fighting for Japan and another fighting for America. Throughout these trying times, Haru finds deep within herself a hidden strength, discovering truth in the old Japanese saying, “The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.”

Inspired by the life of the author’s grandmother and shining a light on a little-known chapter of America’s past, The Bamboo Wife is a sweeping story of immigration, settlement, war, and survival.