Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

These excerpts follow the life of Henry Lee, juxtaposing his experiences as an elderly widower in 1986 Seattle with his formative childhood memories from 1942. The modern story is driven by Henry’s investigation into the discovery of belongings—a historical time capsule—found in the basement of the run-down Panama Hotel, left by Japanese families during their forced evacuation to internment camps. This discovery forces Henry to confront his past relationship with Keiko Okabe, a Japanese-American girl he met as a boy, despite facing intense anti-Japanese sentiment from his nationalist Chinese father and enduring racist bullying. Young Henry is shown secretly cultivating his friendship with Keiko, sharing a love for jazz music and working to protect her family’s precious possessions before her forced removal to camps like Camp Harmony and Minidoka. In 1986, Henry, aided by his son Marty and Marty’s fiancée, seeks to return Keiko's hidden items, including her sketchbooks and a broken Oscar Holden record, ...