It's hard to face some of the nastiest tragedies of wartime. That's a good reason for historical fiction — it gives us vision through the eyes of someone we care about, without having to endure the burden of grief and rage that nonfiction reporting often conveys.
Naomi Hirahara's new crime novel CLARK AND DIVISION (to be released by Soho Crime on August 3) provides a well-told crime narrative, as 20-year-old Aki Ito delves into the short life and recent death of her older sister. The Ito family arrived in Chicago during World War II in stages: first Rose, the beautiful and confident older sister, in autumn 1943, then then Aki and their parents, a few months into the new year of 1944. But the night before the family's arrival, Rose died in a train accident, presumed suicide, and this tragedy knocks them out of hope and into despair.
They hadn't even had time to get accustomed to hope, really. As Japanese-born individuals, Aki's parents were targeted right after the Pearl Harbor attack, and with their daughters they'd subsisted in the rough cold life of the desert location called Manzanar. Their business, their home, their belongings, nearly everything was stripped from them. Arrival in Chicago was supposed to give them a chance for a new start. And instead, it seemed it would destroy them.
But in a meeting with the coroner, who tells her bluntly that her older sister had an abortion a couple of weeks before her death, Aki steps unexpectedly out of her culturally instilled roles and speaks up:
"You have made a mistake," I said. My declaration surprised even me. I usually would not tell any authority figure, especially a hakujin man, that he was wrong. Why was he mentioning an unspeakable criminal procedure like an abortion wen my sister was dead. "A train ran over her." ... My sister didn't kill herself. Not on the day before we were coming to Chicago.
The coroner looked at me silently, and I knew what he was communicating. She had taken her life because we were coming—probably out of shame for her situation.
"Rose wouldn't do that."
Aki's conviction drives her to investigate Rose's life as well as death, a slow process since she's also got to handle earning a living and taking care of her devastated parents. But Chicago is riddled with crime, gangs, and the kind of prostitution that depends on half-starved immigrant women. Aki may be right.
Hirahara's crime exposition works well, and Aki's investigation operates with alternating success and barriers. The closer she gets to solving her sister's murder (and it is indeed murder), though, the more danger she's in, herself. Plus she's depending on others, from American-born Japanese to other kinds of Americans, to assist her in the doubly strange new world she's entered.
Hirahara's earlier publications include two mystery series, as well as nonfiction books including Life After Manzanar. A hint of stiffness in the text gives the feel of translated work, which this clearly isn't -- but perhaps the author struggled at times to translate the emotional impact of Manzanar and persistent anti-Asian attacks into another time, and bring them back to us. It's a forgivable struggle, very understandable.
The greatest delight of reading CLARK AND DIVISION (the title refers to a street district in Chicago) is stepping inside the mind and heart of the "other," as Aki Ito begins to determine what it is to be a Japanese American in a bold new world. Hirahara's given a protagonist who'll feel more like a friend by the end of the book, a route to insight and refreshed experience for her readers.
PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.
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