Garden of Stones

By Sophie Littlefield

“Suspense, mystery, and love” fill a multigenerational “moving drama of women in a Japanese American family. . . . The shocking revelation is unforgettable” (Booklist).

In the dark days of World War II, a mother makes the ultimate sacrifice

Lucy Takeda is just fourteen years old, living in Los Angeles, when the bombs rain down on Pearl Harbor. Within weeks, she and her mother, Miyako, are ripped from their home, rounded up—along with thousands of other innocent Japanese-Americans—and taken to the Manzanar prison camp.

Buffeted by blistering heat and choking dust, Lucy and Miyako must endure the harsh living conditions of the camp. Corruption and abuse creep into every corner of Manzanar, eventually ensnaring beautiful, vulnerable Miyako. Ruined and unwilling to surrender her daughter to the same fate, Miyako soon breaks. Her final act of desperation will stay with Lucy forever . . . and spur her to sins of her own.

Bestselling author Sophie Littlefield weaves a powerful tale of stolen innocence and survival that echoes through generations, reverberating between mothers and daughters. It is a moving chronicle of injustice, triumph and the unspeakable acts we commit in the name of love.

“Littlefield . . . makes her tale resonant and universal . . . gripping.” —Publishers Weekly

“Littlefield shows considerable skills for delving into the depths of her characters and complex plotting as she disarms the reader.” —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781460300305

Sophie Littlefield

Sophie Littlefield grew up in rural Missouri. She writes the post-apocalyptic Aftertime series for LUNA Books. She also writes paranormal fiction for young adults. Her first novel, A Bad Day for Sorry, won an Anthony Award for Best First Novel and an RT Award for Best First Mystery. It was also shortlisted for Edgar, Barry, Crimespree and Macavity Awards, and it was named to lists of the year's best mystery debuts by the Chicago Sun-Times and South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Sophie lives in Northern California. Sophie loves to hear from her readers via her email: [e-mail]

Book preview

1

San Francisco

Tuesday, June 6, 1978

Reg Forrest lowered himself painfully into his desk chair, which was as hard, used and creaky as he was. The dark brown leather was cracked and worn, the brass nails missing in places. When he found the chair in the alley, he thought it had a certain masculine appeal, like something a hotshot lawyer might own. But it hadn’t taken long for the thing to seem as shoddy as the rest of his office.

Reg flipped the corners of the stack of papers on his desk and sighed. The coffee wouldn’t be ready for a few minutes yet.

Dust motes swirled in the first rays of morning sunlight, causing Reg to blink and then to sneeze. He had positioned his desk under the only window in the room, a filthy pane of glass at ceiling level that looked out into a corrugated-aluminum well half-filled with garbage and dead leaves. Above the window well was the same alley where he’d found the chair, a narrow, stinking passage between the DeSoto Hotel and the building next door. Still, early in the morning, depending on the season, an errant sunbeam or two found its way down into the room, and for that small grace, Reg occasionally remembered to be grateful.

Beyond the office door, there was silence. The gym opened at seven, which was still a half hour away. He’d already unlocked the doors, but the half-dozen men who’d gather by seven would wait for him to come prop them open. They knew each other’s habits. Early morning drew the shift workers, the boys getting in a few rounds on the bag after clocking out. Night security, deliverymen, dockworkers—they were quieter, as a rule, than the ones who came later. Other than the occasional grunt or curse, they had little to say as they worked through their circuits.

It had been several years since Reg himself had taken to the practice ring. He’d broken the same hand three times, and his shoulder was never right anymore. The ligaments in his back were for shit, and there was a scar like a zipper running over his left knee. He was fifty-nine years old and he’d spent three of his six decades here, in the basement of the DeSoto Hotel, building Reg’s Gym up from nothing. Reg had paid in rough coin, but he wasn’t complaining; the sounds and smells of this place were all he knew anymore, and if he spent more of his time locked up in this office with a calculator than on the floor these days, he supposed that was all right. A man slows down, in time.

A knock at the door. Raphael, his day manager, sometimes came in early and drank a cup of coffee with him. On days like this, when his aches and pains were more troublesome than usual, Reg could do without the conversation—at least until he’d had a chance to work the kinks out of his joints and was feeling more sociable. The only reason he came in to work this early was his insomnia: often stark-awake by three or four, Reg had nowhere else to go.

Yeah. Come in.

He didn’t turn. The only sound was the gurgling of the coffeepot. Reg squinted at the sheet on top of the stack and wondered if he needed to go to the eye doctor again. What had it been, two years, three, and it seemed like they were printing everything smaller all the time.

Hey, Raphael, look at this invoice, will you, I can’t make out the damn numbers—

He jerked with surprise when warm hands covered his eyes. For a moment he was frozen, remembering the way his sister used to sneak up on him, half a century ago. She loved to put her small hands over his eyes and make him guess, little skinny Martha who died of scarlet fever before her seventh birthday; he hadn’t thought of her in years. The hands pushed gently, tilting his head back, one of them cupping his chin to hold it in place. Reg squinted, trying to see who was standing above him, but he was blinded by the sun streaming in the window. Something cold and hard pressed against his forehead, and the last thing Reg saw was a face surrounded with a brilliant, glowing corona, like Jesus in the picture his mother had hung above Martha’s bed.

2

San Francisco

Wednesday, June 7, 1978

Patty Takeda was having the nightmare again.

In it, she stood at the back of the church as the organist finished the last few measures of Franck’s Fantaisie in C, watching her maid of honor approach the altar and execute a perfect turn in her pink high heels. There was a pause as the entire congregation waited breathlessly. Then the first triumphant notes of the wedding march rang out, and everyone rose in their pews and turned toward the back, expectant smiles on their faces. Patty emerged from behind the latticed anteroom divider. Step–pause, step–pause, a smile fixed on her face.

But something was wrong. Audible gasps filled the chapel and Patty looked down and discovered that she had forgotten to put her dress on. Or her slip, for that matter, or her panties or strapless bra. She was completely naked other than her white satin pumps. She tried to cover herself with her hands, but everyone was watching, staring, pointing, and she turned to run back to the dressing room but the ushers were standing shoulder to shoulder, blocking her way, gaping.

Patty woke, shoulders heaving, sweat gluing her T-shirt to her neck, the sheets knotted around her body. She was breathing hard, but at least she was awake. Sometimes, when she had this dream, she ran around the church for what seemed like hours, never finding an exit.

The sound of the doorbell jarred her fully awake. Was that the sound that had broken through the dream? Patty groped for the clock on the bedside table, knocking the tissue box to the floor before she found it. Almost nine. Patty lay still and listened as her mother answered the door. She heard her mother’s voice, and a man’s, back and forth a few times—and then footsteps, through the house, down the hall past Patty’s door, into the kitchen.

...can offer you tea, if you like, Inspector, Patty heard her mother say clearly as they passed, and then the voices became indistinguishable again.

Inspector? Patty untangled the sheets from her legs and sat up in bed, rubbing her face. Why would a detective be visiting her mother’s house? She pulled on the nylon running shorts she’d tossed on a chair the night before and was halfway to the door before she changed her mind and went back for her bra. It took a little searching—the bra had disappeared halfway under the bed—but Patty eventually found it and yanked it on, then exchanged the T-shirt she had been sleeping in for a fresh one from the suitcase on the floor. She sniffed under her armpits—not terrible. She really needed to unpack. She’d moved out of her apartment last week and she was staying here with her mother until the wedding, but it was only her third day off and she was still enjoying being lazy.

She peeked out the bedroom door, craning her neck to peer into the kitchen, and saw a man’s polished brown shoe under the kitchen table. The rest of him was just out of sight. Patty grimaced and tiptoed across the hall to the bathroom. She washed her face and brushed her teeth in record time, pulling a comb through her hair and settling for a quick swipe of lip gloss.

When she entered the kitchen, she was feeling presentable, if self-conscious about her bare legs. The man stood and greeted her with a nod.

Patty, her mother said. This is Inspector Torre.

Pleased to meet you.

You too, Patty said automatically, taking the hand he offered, finding his grip surprisingly tentative. He was at least six, six-one, with the sort of beard that looks untended by lunchtime and thick, black sideburns encroaching on his jaw. Handsome, some women would no doubt think.

I’m here to talk to your mother about the death of an acquaintance of hers.

Who? Patty quickly cataloged everyone in her mother’s circle, a very short list. Besides work, Lucy Takeda went almost nowhere.

Reginald Forrest. He was the proprietor of a commercial gym in the basement of the DeSoto Hotel.

Patty knew the hotel—a once-grand stone edifice about a quarter mile away, on Pine or Bush or one of those streets. A pocket of the neighborhood that had seen the last of its glory days. But she had never heard the man’s name.

Lucy tsked dismissively. Someone I knew a long time ago, in Manzanar. I haven’t seen him in thirty-five years.

But— Patty looked from the inspector to her mother, confused. Lucy never spoke about her time in the internment camp. Why on earth would you want to talk to my mother?

Torre cleared his throat, looking slightly uncomfortable. Someone claims to have seen someone resembling your mother in the vicinity of the gym around the time he died. We’ve got a time of death between five and seven yesterday morning, and this person places your mother there between seven and seven-fifteen.

But that’s— Patty struggled to clear the morning haze from her thoughts. My mom doesn’t ever go over there.

This person said... Inspector Torre seemed to be searching for the right words. That is to say, he described certain characteristics.... We asked around the neighborhood and several people mentioned Mrs. Takeda.

Now Patty understood his discomfort. Characteristics... Yes, people didn’t quickly forget her mother’s face. The pocked and shiny pink scars took up most of the right side of her face, extending from her right eye down to her jawline. They encroached upon her lower eyelid, pink and puffed and vertically clefted; the eye itself was milky and gave the impression of both blindness and acute vision, which was unsettling and put the observer in the uncomfortable position of having to find another place to focus his own eyes.

The inspector talked to Dave Navarro, Lucy said indignantly. And the Cooks!

The faint beginning of a headache stirred between Patty’s temples. Her mother had never had a great relationship with the neighbors—she could only imagine how those conversations went. I’m sorry, but this is, well, I don’t get it, Patty said. I mean, you weren’t at the hotel yesterday morning, were you, Mom?

Of course not. And besides, Inspector Torre said it could also be a suicide, Lucy said. It probably was.

Why would you say that? Torre asked.

"You said that. You said the stun gun or whatever it was—"

Captive bolt pistol, Inspector Torre said. Often used with livestock, but it has other uses. What I meant was, was there something about Mr. Forrest that makes you think he might have been suicidal?

How would I know? Mrs. Takeda asked. Reginald Forrest is an old man now. I’m sure he had his reasons.

Was, Torre interjected. "Was an old man."

Lucy shrugged. She was in an odd mood, both irritable and nervous, Patty thought. Wait, she said. Can you just back up a little for me, Inspector? I’m sorry... I haven’t had my coffee. I’m not sure I’m following what you’re saying.

Lucy frowned, an expression that distorted her scars, and folded her arms over her chest.

Sure. Torre reached for a notebook in his breast pocket, licked his thumb and started turning pages. Janitor was buffing the lobby floor at about seven, seven-fifteen yesterday morning, he said. He described you pretty accurately. Said you appeared flustered, that you were walking faster than normal.

He doesn’t know me, Lucy said. How does he know how fast I walk?

"Mother. Please."

Your mother’s neighbors, Mr. David Navarro and Cindy and Tom Cook, did say that she takes frequent walks around the neighborhood.

How would they know where I walk? They’re not my friends, Lucy said. They’ve never liked me. Dave Navarro had a tree whose roots were choking the sewage pipes under my house, and we argued over it until he finally cut it down. And the Cooks have a daughter who spreads her legs for every boy who comes around.

Surely my mother isn’t the only person you’re interviewing, Patty said hastily, painfully aware of how caustic Lucy could sound to someone who didn’t know her. She was a loner, but that certainly didn’t mean she’d killed anyone, a point Patty feared might be lost on Torre.

He shrugged. Sure, we’ve got a few people we’re talking to. Forrest had a son from a first marriage—he’s disturbed or retarded or something, lives in a group home. There’s also a girlfriend. I don’t suppose you can tell me anything about either of them.

Of course not, Lucy snapped. Patty tried to telegraph be nice. I told you I haven’t talked to him in three decades.

All right. Torre tucked the notebook back in his pocket. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you a chance to think about Forrest, see if you remember anything that might help us out.

From thirty years ago? Damn, now she was doing it too—Patty instantly regretted snapping.

Torre turned his gaze on her. So you live here with your mother, Patty?

Patty resisted the urge to glare. Only for a couple of weeks. I’m getting married. The wedding’s on the seventeenth.

Oh. Well, in that case, congratulations.

He stood and adjusted his jacket, his eyes traveling up to the shelf that ran the length of the wall separating the kitchen from the dining room, and Patty cringed inwardly. This was the moment that marked every newcomer’s first visit to the house, the moment Patty had learned to dread so much that eventually she’d stopped bringing friends home at all.

Patty let her gaze follow Torre’s, and tried to see what he saw, from his perspective—the gruesome tableau was as familiar to her as her mother’s Corelle dish pattern or the fake-brick design of the kitchen linoleum.

All those eyes: wide and shiny, staring into every corner of the room at once. It probably seemed like there were dozens of them, but in reality there were only six or eight animals—squirrels and chipmunks and a pale little desert mouse, all of them stuffed and mounted so that they seemed to perch at the edge of the shelf, tiny claws curled around the edges of the painted board, hunching and crouching and tensed to jump, mouths open and leering, like so many gargoyles about to come to life.

3

Los Angeles

December 1941

Every day when the noon bell rang, it was the lunch monitor’s job to stand at the front of the class and choose rows of students to line up, the quietest and most attentive first.

The teacher, for whom the ritual had lost some of its appeal over time—understandably, because she was at least a hundred years old—attended to her own tasks: gathering her purse and her lunch in its wicker pail, removing her glasses and placing them in the desk drawer, straightening stacks of papers. Unless the lunch monitor was utterly devoid of any sense of drama, she would drag out the selection, taking her time surveying the rows of eighth graders, and only after building sufficient suspense would she announce her choice.

Row three, you may line up.

And then the process would be repeated until everyone had lined up for lunch.

Each Monday morning, new recess and lunch monitors took up the yoke of duty, the schedule having been posted the first day of school. Lucy had waited more than three months for her turn. She had asked her mother to press her best blouse, the one with the tiny pleated ruffles around the Peter Pan collar. She had worn her favorite headband, the navy velvet with the small folded bow, and new snow-white socks. Lucy looked her best this Monday morning, and because she was Lucy Takeda, that meant she looked splendid indeed.

All through the morning she waited impatiently, forcing herself not to slouch in her seat. At last it was nearly noon. The teacher glanced up at the clock, and then looked thoughtfully at Lucy. She did not smile. Instead she closed her eyes and pinched the flabby skin between her eyebrows, frowning as though she had a headache. Then she opened her planner and ran her finger down the page. The new hall monitor this week shall be Samuel McGinnis, she said without inflection. The new lunch monitor shall be Nancy Marks.

For a second, Lucy was sure that she had heard wrong, that the teacher had made a mistake. Lucy had certainly not made a mistake—the date had been circled on the calendar at home for months.

Nancy Marks turned in her seat and gawped at Lucy, but she scrambled to her feet when the teacher snapped that she didn’t have all day. It seemed that Nancy’s voice held a note of apology as she chose Lucy’s row to go first, but as the students filed to the front of the room, Nancy did not look at her.

* * *

It’s because you’re a Jap, Yvonne Graziano said, not without sympathy. Yvonne and Lucy had been best friends since second grade. They huddled in the corner of the playground under an arbor covered with the canes of climbing roses gone dormant for the winter. Lucy had learned not to stand too close, or her angora coat would get stuck on the thorns.

Yvonne spoke with authority, since her eldest brother was in the Army Air Corps. He was stationed at March Field, but Yvonne’s mother was worried that he would be sent to the front lines as soon as the United States entered the war.

My dad says if there was ever a war with Japan, he’d sign up if they let him, Lucy said, fighting back tears. She’d managed to stay proud and aloof all through lunch, though she had little appetite for the boiled egg and apple her mother had packed. He says he’d go fight if he could.

Yvonne nodded sympathetically. My dad says your dad is one of the good ones. But he’s too old.

It was true—Lucy’s father was astonishingly old. His teeth were long and yellow, and his mustache was more silver than black. Behind his shiny round spectacles his eyes—though kind, always kind—were nested in wrinkles.

But still, he’s as American as anyone else. On this point Lucy was less certain, because her father still spoke Japanese occasionally. He read the Rafu Shimpo, a newspaper printed only in Japanese, and conducted much of his personal business in the shops along First Street in Little Tokyo. On their anniversary, her father took her mother to dinner at the Empire Hotel; he often brought her flowers wrapped in white paper from Uyehara Florist. Even their church, Christ Community Presbyterian, was mostly filled with Japanese families on Sundays.

Still, Lucy had no doubts about her father’s patriotism. On the Fourth of July he studded the yard with tiny American flags, and he stood proudly for the national anthem at Gilmore Field when he took Lucy to see the Stars play.

Yvonne looked at her sympathetically. That’s good. But my dad says it’s not going to matter much longer, if Japan keeps invading. He says things are bound to change.

Yvonne’s words were as chilling as they were vague. Change was unimaginable. Lucy had grown up in the same house her parents lived in before she was born, a white two-story on Clement Street with black shutters and a porch with flowers spilling out of baskets hanging from the eaves, a nicer house than most of her friends lived in. Lucy had always had the same bedroom, the same bathroom with its pink-and-black tile and ruffled curtains in the window. The same walk to school—down Clement to the corner, crossing Normandie, and then three blocks to 156th—since the first day of kindergarten. The only changes in her life were the coverlets her mother made for her bed, the dresses hanging in her closet and the height of the two little twisty-branched trees in the front, which her mother had planted when she and her father were first married. Each year, they grew a few more inches, and Lucy knew that someday the tallest branches would reach the eaves.

Lucy knew that her father was worried too, though he refused to speak of the war while Lucy was in the room; when her parents listened to the radio after dinner, she was sent to her room to study. Of course, she snuck out and listened, anyway. And there were the newspapers: she couldn’t read a single word of the Rafu Shimpo, but the headlines at the newsstand on the way to the market were impossible to miss. Hidden Tank Army Protects Moscow. Seven Vessels Sunk Off Italy. Still, how could the events unfolding in these far-off places possibly affect Lucy and her family a million miles away in California, where even now, in the middle of winter, the air was scented with citrus blossoms?

Two boys kicked a ball past them, coattails flapping. When they saw Lucy and Yvonne, the shorter of the two skidded to a halt. Thought you were supposed to be lunch monitor this week, he said, sticking a finger into his ear and scratching vigorously.

Lucy couldn’t bear to look at him. Instead, she pretended to rub at a bit of dirt on the lid of her lunch pail.

"Thought you were supposed to be running home to your mama, Yvonne snapped. I heard her calling you. She said you wet the bed again."

Lucy, buoyed by her friend’s loyalty, blinked and smiled shyly. But as the boy ran off and Yvonne linked an arm through hers, Lucy knew that the changes had already started, and nothing in her power could stop them.

4

That day after school, Lucy installed herself in the front parlor to wait for her father to come home.

She was tired of her parents trying to protect her from things they thought she was too young to understand. Lucy supposed that had been all right when her world was limited to the bright-colored illustrations in her picture books, the elaborate tea parties she held for her dolls and stuffed toys, the swings and the slide at the playground in Rosecrans Park.

But she was in the eighth grade now, and her world had been growing steadily for a long time. She’d read all the books in her classroom and begun on the ones on her parents’ shelves—the ones in English, anyway, most of which belonged to her mother. Some were a little melodramatic for her taste, but Lucy preferred to be bored and occasionally confused by Edna Ferber and Daphne du Maurier than by Madeline and Caddie Woodlawn.

Consulting her mother about the future was out of the question. Miyako Takeda wasn’t like other mothers: she was quieter, prone to spells and moods. Withdrawn much of the time. Easily upset. And, of course, far more beautiful, which only made her seem more delicate, somehow.

Renjiro Takeda, on the other hand, would know what to do. He was a businessman, well respected, important. Lucy pretended to read—a book called The Rains Came that had been made into a movie that she was too young to see, in which a lot of people appeared to be falling in love with each other. The book was so confusing that she didn’t intend to finish it, but it was as good as any, since she had too many things on her mind to pay attention to the words.

At last, when dark had fallen and Lucy could hear her mother moving about the kitchen getting dinner ready, the front door opened. Her father’s face lit up when he spotted Lucy reading in the wing chair, but his smile didn’t disguise his weariness. He had been looking tired much of the time lately.

Hello, little one, he said, removing his hat and placing it on a high peg of the coatrack. He was a natty dresser and his hat was made of fine wool, smooth to the touch, its edges turned up slightly. Next he hung his topcoat, brushing invisible specks off its tight-woven surface. Lucy liked to watch this ritual, and she waited patiently until he finished. Only then did he turn to her and hold his hands out. Lucy leapt off the chair and put her hands in his, and he swung her gently around, something she suspected she was too old for, but couldn’t bear to give up yet.

"I have something for

Reviews for Garden of Stones

[samsattler · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I’ve read two other Sophie Littlefield novels (A Bad Day for Pretty and The Missing Place), so I thought I knew what to expect from the author. As it turns out, I was only partially right about that, and that’s both good and bad news. The good news is that the plot of Garden of Stones is every bit as intriguing as I suspected it would be; the bad news is that the novel suffers from exactly the same flaw that bothered me in The Missing Place – more on that later. Garden of Stones is a historical fiction study of what it may have been like for a beautiful Japanese widow and her fourteen-year-old daughter to be on their own inside a West Coast internment/concentration camp during World War II. The internees/prisoners are entirely at the mercy of the staff in charge of their day-to-day existence and all of their activities at the Manzanar camp, and it is only a matter of time before bad things begin to happen to the extraordinarily beautiful Miyako Takeda – and then to her daughter Lucy. Miyako is being sexually exploited, as are numerous others in the camp, and she will do anything, absolutely anything, to keep the same from happening to Lucy. The story begins during the summer of 1978 and is told largely through the eyes of Patty Takeda, Lucy’s about-to-be-married daughter. Patty never knew Miyako, her grandmother, and Lucy has told her very little about her own experiences inside Manzanar. But now, almost forty years later, after the police suddenly accuse Lucy of murdering one of her neighbors, all that is about to change. If Patty is going to be able to defend her mother from the murder charges, she is going to have to know exactly what happened to Miyako and Lucy in 1942. But when Patty discovers old photo albums among the dead man’s possessions, she realizes just how seriously in trouble her mother really is.Early on, the story begins flashing back and forth between 1942 and 1978, and for most of the book, the reader knows more about what really happened in Manzanar than Patty knows. We know the truth, for instance, about Lucy’s horribly disfigured face – which is how she was placed near the murder scene by witnesses – long before it is revealed to Patty, who has never known her mother not to be disfigured. We know that Lucy has good reason to be bitter about her past, and that the murdered neighbor was more than he seems. Part of the novel’s intrigue is watching Patty try to catch up with the rest of us as her mother’s sad story is steadily revealed.And then, about eighty or ninety percent of the way through the story, just as happened in Littlefield’s The Missing Place, everything is rushed to its conclusion with one revelation after the other – so many of them, so quickly, that it is almost overwhelming. The story is told in such an out-of-balance way, that it ends up feeling top-heavy and contrived. There are so many “big reveals” that I began to lose track of them, and was left feeling a bit frustrated by such a drastic and sudden change of pace.Bottom Line: Garden of Stones tells a good story, but Littlefield’s rushed ending lessens its impact by reminding the reader that they may not have been provided with all the clues necessary to answer some very important questions on their own. Whether that’s a fair approach or not may be open to question, but I find it frustrating enough to make me wary about investing time in another Sophie Littlefield novel now that it’s happened in two of the three novels of hers I’ve read. Audiobook fans will be pleased to note that veteran narrator Emily Woo Zeller does a very good job with Garden of Stones. Her voice is pleasant, and it lends itself well to distinguishing the various characters from one another. Too, her reading-pace nicely keeps the action moving along.

[heatherlinc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a poignant story that focuses on the relationship between mothers an daughters, and the sacrifices a person will make to protect the one they love. I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the book, as the reader struggles to understand fully the horrors that Lucy and her mother had to endure in the Manzanar interment camp for Japanese Americans during WWII. What Miyako did to protect her daughter was, on the one hand absolutely horrifying, but at the same time understandable. However, once Lucy left the camp, I thought the story lost something. I still enjoyed Lucy's story but the emotional pull was missing. Having said that, the last couple of chapters were amazing and totally unexpected. Overall, a touching story of injustice, suffering, revenge and love.

[cherylk_44 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lucy lives with her mother, Miyako and father. Lucy puts on her best school clothes. She knows today is the day that she will be chosen to be either a hall or lunch monitor. Only this does not happen. One of Lucy’s friends tell her it is because she is Japanese. Lucy does not realize just how different this really makes her until her father dies and the President orders all of the Japanese to be sent to concentration camps. Sophie Littlefield has done it again. She won me over with her story of Lucy and Miyako. What a great pair. Both women such strong women. The love that each other had for one another was obvious. There is nothing stronger than a mother’s love. The world that Sophie wrote during the war times and the concentration camp that Lucy and her mother were relocated to and had to endure was awful. It was like I was right there with them and I could smell the filth, see the soldiers in their uniforms smoking their cigarettes, seeing the neighbors bed sheets hanging up as their for of a door for privacy, and maneuvering my way through the camp. Garden of Stones is the type of book that will stick with you long after you have put it down!

[teeth_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a good book that had alot of twists and turns and kept me guessing until the end This book travels back and forth between 1978 SAN francisco and 1941-43 when Pearl Harbor was attacked and Lucy and her mother were sent to Manzanar. Lucy's mother makes the ultimate sacrifice to save her daughter.

[nfmgirl2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book starts with a murder, and elderly Lucy is a prime suspect. Her daughter Patty begins to question her mother's relationship with the victim, and through flashbacks we get to know Lucy as a young girl and to learn about her mother's past relationship with the victim, as well as other secrets.Lucy as an adult is reserved and dignified, and she is loved and respected by her daughter Patty. However Patty doesn't really know much about her mother's past.But as the story goes on, we are led through Lucy's past, and the horrors she experienced during WWII. From losing her father, to the government ordering all Japanese-Americans to interment camps, and all of the horrors of the camp, these are all revealed through the story. As a child, Lucy was sweet and smart. But she was also confused as the world around her changed. Confused by the animosity of friends at school, the teachers, the world at large, as the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and all Japanese Americans had to bear the doubt of their own chosen country.Lucy's mother Miyako was a very beautiful, but a very flawed, emotionally unstable and dependent woman. It seems she married her husband in hopes that such a kind and tolerant man, and the quiet and stable life he offered, would secure her against a world she found overwhelming. She was often emotionally absent from Lucy's life, and Lucy grew to idolize and adore her father, as many young girls do. So when Lucy loses her father, she loses her bearings. And the next thing she knows, their family is being uprooted and forced to leave everything behind to move to a military-style camp in Manzanar, just for being Japanese.During her years in Manzanar, Lucy grows into a beautiful young lady, the spitting image of her beautiful mother, and she meets and experiences first love with a young man by the name of Jessie.I don't want to give too much away, so I won't reveal too much. But there were some very sweet moments, but there were also things later on that felt cut too short. I feel as if I were a little short-changed with one or two points in the storyline, but overall it was a fine story.I enjoyed this story. It is gently written, but realistic and hard-hitting. This provocative topic has recently become very popular, and there are a lot of books coming out now about the Japanese internment camps, and this is my first to read. And a fine introduction to this topic it was. This is a shameful period in America's history, and I can only pray that we never again repeat such mistreatment of our own citizens.Lucy as a young girl is an engaging child that pulls at your heart strings. You want to protect her as a young girl. As an adult, you want to free her from her past.My final word: This story wound up being more of a mystery than I expected. You get glimpses of things early on that slowly play out and reveal themselves, such as Lucy's scars. When you learn how beautiful she was as a girl, you wonder what happened to scar her? And who was this man from her past that is now dead? Who is the father of her daughter Patty? And then right in the end, in the final pages of the story...WHAM-O!...plot twist! And then another! And another! There were a few very nice, unexpected twists at the end that left this story very satisfying. This was definitely a worthy read.

[suetu_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Patient readers will be rewardedSophie Littlefield’s latest novel, Garden of Stones, opens in San Francisco in 1978. The first chapter anticipates the murder of an old man. The second chapter introduces Patty Takeda and her mother Lucy. Patty, visiting her mother in the days leading up to her (Patty’s) wedding, wakes to find Lucy having an early morning chat with a police inspector. Lucy is being questioned because she knew the victim decades prior, and neighborhood residents placed her at the scene. With her horrible facial scaring, she’s hard to miss. The third chapter is where the novel’s structure becomes apparent. It flashes us back to the Los Angeles of 1941.Having just met the caustic older Lucy, we are now introduced to the stunningly beautiful adolescent version. This privileged young girl is about to suffer a series of blows leading up to the United States’ entry into the war. Her Japanese heritage is suddenly a huge liability. From there, the novel moves back and forth in time between the events of 1978 and those in the 1940’s—with the bulk of the tale occurring in the past. Lucy is sent to the Manzanar internment camp, along with her family, friends, and neighbors. It is events that occurred at Manzanar that directly cultivated the woman Lucy was to become—and perhaps to the murder that has occurred.Now, I have been a fan of Ms. Littlefield’s for years, and I love the sheer breadth and depth of what she writes from comic mysteries to zombie apocalypses. The set-up above seems like another mystery, but truthfully, it’s more of a historic drama. The subject of Japanese internment strikes close to home to me—literally—having spent the past decade living a block from San Francisco’s Japantown. My neighborhood was greatly impacted by this shameful period of California’s history. I think fiction can be a powerful medium for evoking history. Through fiction, stories live on and are humanized. I also think that a lot of research went into this novel, and yet I felt somewhat frustrated by viewing this history through the eyes of an unsophisticated teenage girl. Those flashback sections of the novel had something of a YA feel about them. Now, I have nothing against young adult fiction—I read a ton of it—but here I was hungering for a little more…detail …maturity … substance. That would be my complaint. That said, I found myself very caught up in the story of these characters. Littlefield writes, “It was as if her mother had once been an entirely different person, and Patty faulted herself for never having seen far enough into her depths, for not being curious enough to coax out the story until now.” Lucy Takeda lived an extraordinary life in a period of great historic significance. As events led up to what felt like a climax, I realized that I was only at the center of the tale. As Lucy matured, I became more and more invested in her story. The frustration I’d felt earlier in the novel disappeared. Character development has always been Ms. Littlefield’s strength, and that is again the case here. Still, by the time I’d reached the novel’s end, she managed to truly surprise me with a couple of unexpected plot twists. One, in particular, was really cleverly done. Ultimately, the murder that opens this novel is little more than a framing device, but as such it works well. Garden of Stones is a great choice for readers interested in mother-daughter relationships, or who are simply looking for a great story set against a historic backdrop. While it took me a little while to become fully invested in the tale, the deeper I read, the more I enjoyed this novel.

[janarose1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In the modern day, Lucy Takeda is being quested about the death of a man she knew from her past. Her daughter is working to uncover the truth, did her mom kill him? Alternating between the past and present, the author tells the story of Lucy and her mother Miyako as they are rounded up with other Japanese Americans and taken to an internment camp. A gorgeous woman, Miyako will do anything to protect her daughter.I thought this was powerful and moving book. It was well written, engaging and I had trouble putting it down. The author has definitely done her research into internment camps and the Japanese American experience during WWII. The characters felt very real and multidimensional. Overall, highly recommended.

[eyes92c · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Gut wrenching!!Essentially a story of mothers and daughters caught up in the web of wartime political decisions—the ‘relocation’ camps for Japanese American citizens post Pearl Harbor. Decisions that resulted in human suffering and injustice. The consequences for internees were lost amidst the panic of officials, and blanketed by reactionary national fears and bureaucratic purpose. These decisions had far flung implications and encompassed deep personal tragedies for the people involved. Manzanar was one of ten Internment camps where Japanese American citizens were unconstitutionally incarcerated. Told through the eyes of a Japanese American daughter Lucy, and in tandem with her daughter Patty, this is a gut wrenching and powerful story of generations of unhappiness. The main characters wash up against the sea of others, each islands of pain. Abuse of power reaches out its tendrils and seizes those who are vulnerable. Humanity is under duress in unspeakable conditions that at this time was repeated across many continents. The novel comes out of dark days; dark story blots on landscape of history. I was searching for the hope and redemption. It comes but with a cost. One quite striking moment of light is where Lucy’s self-contained mother shows concern towards an older woman in the toilet block. An unspeakable vignette. Later Lucy’s relationship with Garvey highlights the theme of people being trapped by their circumstances. For me tension thrums from every page. The odd pieces of taxidermy amongst Lucy’s things take on new meaning and significance in the later part of the novel. Reworked bodies with no life, sculptured into being. Life saved into death.A thought provoking work.A NetGalley ARC

[bookdivasreads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lucy Takeda has had an unusual life (major understatement). An only child, she was adored by her father and the spitting image of her mother. Although Lucy grew up with a mother suffering with manic depression, she has led a very sheltered and privileged life. All of that changes with the death of her father, followed by the loss of her family home and relocation to an internment camp. It is here at Manzanar that Lucy witnesses great brutality and prejudice. She bears witness to the rape and continued sexual abuse of her mother, not to mention the sexual abuse of her only friend, sixteen year-old Jessie, at the hands of the men in charge at the camp. She also slowly watches her mother fall into deep depression that results in a horrible accident that will scar Lucy for life, a murder, and then her mother's suicide. With the help of a nun, Lucy is eventually able to leave Manzanar before the war ends. She is given a job as a maid at a small hotel, where she eventually befriends the cook and her family, as well as the owner of the hotel, an injured war veteran, Garvey. Fast forward to 1978 and Lucy's daughter, Patty, is preparing to get married. Days before the wedding is to occur, Lucy is being questioned and investigated as the prime suspect in a murder case. The murder victim just so happens to be one of the men that had been charged with overseeing Manzanar. Patty Takeda is already on edge about the wedding and she knows that her mother is keeping secrets. Will she be able to uncover those secrets in time to save her mother or will those secrets destroy what little peace of mind Lucy has obtained since 1944?Ms. Littlefield has done a remarkable job in creating characters and a story that engaged me from the very beginning. Lucy’s story is told in flashback style, alternating between 1943/1944 and 1978. Lucy Takeda is a victim of circumstance, but she overcomes her adversity to make a life for herself and her child. Her physical scars seem to be a manifestation of not only an accident but also the emotional scars she has suffered during her lifetime. Patty Takeda is just as tenacious as her mother as she delves into the history of her mother and grandmother while at Manzanar. Ms. Littlefield presents an emotionally-charged drama with Garden of Stones. There are a few twists at the end that were completely unexpected and only added to my reading pleasure with this story. If you enjoy historical dramas with a bit of suspense and hint of romance, then I recommend you add Garden of Stones to your reading list.

[thisbookends · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My thoughts...I was very lucky to have been granted access to read "Garden of Stones" by the publisher through netgalley.com, a website that provides advanced reader copies [for free] to individuals that request books to read and review. The author has certainly done her research in the area of Japanese internment camps and the reality of how their life changed during this period.I highly recommend this book regardless of your preferred genre. Sophie Littlefield takes you into the world of personal struggles and suffering endured in this bittersweet tale of survival and life's battle to overcome its affect and endeavor to live life as it was meant to be. The characters are real and very believable. You will come to love Lucy and understand why her mother did what she felt she needed to do to protect her daughter from the torment she endured during their time in the internment camp. This astounding well-written novel will weigh heavy on your heart and forever leave an imprint on your mind for years to come.You can pre-order now, release date is February 26, 2013.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

World War I, the United States rounded up all those of Japanese descent and sent them to armed camps. It is horrible what fear will cause supposedly good people to do. After Lucy's father's death, she and her mother are alone and so they are also alone, with no male protection in the camp. we learn of their abuse and treatment at the camp through flashbacks. There is also a present day murder case that it tied back to the camp during the War. Interesting book, I do like books that use flashbacks when they are done well, as this one was. Good book with a good story, liked the present day mystery angle, and likeable characters. ARC from NetGalley.

[shelleyraec · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When the police come to question Lucy Takeda regarding a murder, she is forced to reveal the past she has kept secret from her daughter for nearly forty years. In 1942, Lucy was an intelligent, pretty fourteen year old mourning the recent death of her father, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and all US residents with Japanese ancestry were forcibly ‘relocated’ to camps established for the duration of the war. Sent with her mother, the beautiful but mercurial, Miyako, to a camp in California’s desert, the mother and daughter are forced to endure the trials of corruption, injustice and tragedy.Garden of Stones is a moving, emotional story of loss, prejudice, love and survival. Flashbacks reveal the harrowing experiences of Lucy and her mother in the poorly constructed and under resourced internment camp. While the prisoners did their best to create some semblance of a normal life during their interment, Littlefield describes overflowing toilets, badly prepared food and a shocking lack of privacy, conditions thousands of internee’s were forced to endure for years. It’s a confronting historical circumstance post-WW2 generations are largely ignorant of and the author portrays the situation with compassionate honesty.After the shock of arrival at Manzanar, Lucy’s natural optimism and energy asserts itself and she works as a courier while attending the camp school. Still mired in grief it is weeks before Miyako, urged on by her sister in law, shakes of her debilitative depression to begin work as a seamstress in the camp factory. Lucy is overjoyed that her mother is finally adjusting to life within the camp until her innocence is shattered when she learns the emotionally fragile Miyako, is being forced to submit to the sickening desires of the camp officials. Unable to extricate herself from the officer’s attentions Miyako is led to commit a desperate act that will change everything for Lucy.Lucy is such a lovely child, spirited, smart and resilient, so the contrast with her adult self in the dual time narrative is unbearably poignant, even though at times I felt it was intrusive. For Lucy’s daughter Patty, to whom Lucy is an enigma, understanding her mother’s early life becomes key to absolving her of the present murder. As she uncovers her mother’s past she is stunned by the revelations, though there are still many secrets that Lucy keeps, as a mother determined to protect her child.Well written, with wonderful characterisation and an intriguing storyline, Garden of Stones is a heartbreaking, fascinating and poignant tale of struggle and survival whose bittersweet ending haunts you long after the final page is turned.

[birdsam0610 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Garden of Stones is a different book to what I was expecting from the cover – and I mean that in a good way. I thought the book would be about a mother with a young daughter struggling in an internment camp. While the book does highlight the struggles of Lucy (a teenager, older than the girl on the cover) and her mother, this story is a gripping, heart wrenching one of love and sacrifice. There are scenes that will cause you to gasp in horror, shake your head in disgust at brutal cruelty and weep at the power of love.Garden of Stones has a dual narrative (fast becoming one of my favourite types of reads) and Littlefield executes it beautifully. We see Lucy Takeda and her mother Miyako forced to abandon their home for the Manzanar internment camp. This world is different to what either of them have known. While Lucy adapts somewhat, making friends and getting a part time job, Miyako becomes depressed. Later she is forced to do things that she can never share with Lucy, nor does she want Lucy to suffer a similar fate.In 1978, Lucy’s daughter, Patty is getting ready for her wedding when police inform her that her mother is a potential suspect in a murder case. The dead man was a guard at Manzanar, but Patty knows little about this life. Little by little, Lucy’s story is revealed.I haven’t read a book before that dealt with the Japanese-American view of World War II. Littlefield portrays their awkward position very well – they are American, but being treated as the enemy. It is a grim period of history that should be talked about more so the same mistakes are not repeated. Manzanar is described in great detail – from the streets to the tiny gardens offering a sense of normality in cold, bare living conditions.This story also asks the question – how far would you go for your daughter – or for your mother? Lucy, Miyako and Patty all make great sacrifices in an attempt to protect their loved one. In Miyako’s case, it was somewhat extreme (I’m not going to spoil the scene) but it does ask – where do you draw the line? Were there other options?Despite the bleakness of the setting and the severity of the subject matter, Littlefield writes characters that are easy to relate to and empathise with. Lucy, the main character, is someone I felt very sympathetic to given the struggles she had faced in her young life at Manzanar and afterwards. Patty seemed to be more of a product of the 1970s – she was lighter and more casual, but still had a backbone of steel when it mattered. Don’t we all when it comes to family?There are also happy, loving moments in this novel and the overall feeling of love was strong. I enjoyed this book (reading late into the night) and was surprised to see that Littlefield has written very different genres prior to this! She’s a natural at this kind of historical fiction.Thank you to Harlequin Australia for providing me with a copy of this great book!