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Above the East China Sea
Above the East China Sea: A novel | Sarah Bird
5 posts | 3 read | 3 to read
In her most ambitious, moving, and provocative novel to date, Sarah Bird makes a stunning departure. Above the East China Sea tells the entwined stories of two teenaged girls, an American and an Okinawan, whose lives are connected across seventy years by the shared experience of profound loss, the enduring strength of an ancient culture, and the redeeming power of family love. Luz James, a contemporary U.S. Air Force brat, lives with her strictly-by-the-rules sergeant mother at Kadena Air Base in Okianawa. Luzs older sister, her best friend and emotional center, has just been killed in the Afghan war. Unmoored by her sisters death and a lifetime of constant moving from base to base, Luz turns for the comfort her service-hardened mother cannot offer to the Smokinawans, the waste cases, who gather to get high every night in a deserted cove. When even pills, one-hitters, Cuervo Gold, and a growing crush on Jake Furusato arent enough to soften the unbearable edge, the desolate girl contemplates taking her own life. In 1945, Tamiko Kokuba, along with two hundred of her classmates, is plucked out of her elite girls high school and trained to work in the Imperial Armys horrific cave hospitals. With defeat certain, Tamiko finds herself squeezed between the occupying Japanese and the invading Americans. She believes she has lost her entire family, as well as the island paradise she so loved, and, like Luz, she aches with a desire to be reunited with her beloved sister. On an island where the spirits of the dead are part of life and your entire clan waits for you in the afterworld, suicide offers Tamiko the promise of peace. As Luz tracks down the story of her own Okinawan grandmother, she discovers that, if she surrenders to the most unbrat impulse and allows herself to connect completely with a place and its people, the ancestral spirits will save not only Tamiko but her as well. Propelled by a riveting narrative and set at the very epicenter of the headline-grabbing clash now emerging between the great powers, Above the East China Sea is at once a remarkable chronicle of how war shapes the lives of conquerors as well as the conquered and a deeply moving account of family, friendship, and love that transcends time. This eBook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.
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review
Becker
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Bailedbailed

Dual story lines here. Half of this book was an interesting historical story. The other half was pure teenage angst. I hate teenage angst.🤬

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ErickaS_Flyleafunfurled
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Library sale haul! Got ALL this for $12! And those Bernard Cornwell Sharpe books - such beautiful editions! *sigh*

MStew ❤❤❤ 6y
49 likes1 comment
review
Silvertongue
Mehso-so

I really appreciated reading about the horrors and hardships the Okinawans endured during WWII. I had no idea how terrible the whole situation was for them. However, I found characters in Luz‘s time to not be well fleshed out (poor Jake, king of info dumping), and they didn‘t sound all that realistic to me. Some descriptions were weird, as was the ending. Would be interested in some nonfiction books on this subject. #24in48

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Silvertongue
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9.5 hours read in the first 24 of my first readathon...actually not too shabby. Probably will not make it to 24, but have a fun time and can‘t wait to see what I‘ll get through tomorrow! #24in48

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Silvertongue
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A little more than 5 hours in, woo!Taking a break from Above the East China Sea and switching to audio—Tess of the d‘Urbervilles~ #24in48