What the Scarecrow Said: Cover - Designed by Honi Werner
WHAT THE SCARECROW SAID
Winner, Avery & Jule Hopwood Award
Finalist, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award
Outstanding Achievement, Wisconsin Library Association
Arizona Humanities Council, Community Book Program Selection
"Editor's Recommendation," San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle
Publisher’s nomination for Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award
This epic novel of a Japanese American family begins with the birth of its hero aboard the ship that brings his parents to the United States and ends in the aftermath of a great national shame: the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II.
William Fujita is cast out of California, uprooted from the family nursery business he loved so much, "relocated" into an armed prison camp, and beset by almost unutterable loss. Barred from his home, he finds himself on the cold slopes of New England in the closing months of the Second World War. There, he must battle grief, prejudice, and his own conscience to survive and to reconcile himself with families old and new. As he searches for the mysterious Yoneko - a young woman who holds the key to connecting his shattered past to his uncertain future - Fujita meets unexpected allies in a small Massachusetts farming town. Working for Margaret Kelly, a fiery widow who discovers the grief and passion beneath his reserved surface, Fujita endeavors to prepare for planting that unpromising tract known as Widow's Peak. Together with Margaret, a war widow named Livvie, and her scared and damaged young son, Garvin, Fujita becomes an unwilling participant in an impromptu family bonded by sacrifice, intrigue, and unanticipated love.
Published in hardcover and paper by HarperCollins ReganBooks, the book was a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Series, and took the author on a tour making dozens of appearances across the U.S.
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WHAT PEOPLE SAY
“A tale full of vivid movement and fresh insight.”
— Los Angeles Times Book Review
"...Lives up to the best tradition of the historical novel. This is a good summer read that lingers long after the covers close."
— San Antonio Express News