Painful breakups and long separations define this gentle, thoughtful novel by Yoshikawa (One Hundred and One Ways), in which two stepsisters rekindle a long-interrupted friendship. Claudia and Rei first meet when they are nine, after Claudia's father, a New Jersey geologist, abandons Claudia's mother for Rei's mother, a Japanese artist who has recently immigrated to the U.S. The two girls become fast friends—they insist that they even look alike, though Claudia is blond and Catholic-Jewish, and Rei is Japanese—but when they are 17, their parents divorce, and they are separated. As the novel begins, they meet again for the first time in 17 years. Rei, battling skin cancer, looks to Claudia for the support she always provided as a child. Claudia, in turn, barrages Rei with countless questions about the demise of their parents' marriage and Rei's disappearance, and consults her about her own affair with a married man, Vikrum. As the novel progresses, Rei's mother, long viewed by Claudia as the temptress who destroyed her family, emerges as a conflicted woman bound by pride and scarred by an incident in Japan during World War II. As her story is revealed, Claudia begins to think differently about her past, but also about her tormented relationship with Vikrum. Yoshikawa's writing has a tendency to swim into soft focus, but the emotional struggles she recounts are keenly described and their resolutions unexpected. Agent, Sandra Dijkstra. (June)
