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Clark and Division

by Naomi Hirahara

J-Sei’s Book Club selection for Fall is CLARK AND DIVISION, the latest thrilling mystery by award-winning author Naomi Hirahara, who very graciously made an in-person visit to J-Sei for a hybrid book signing and reading event in August.

Synopsis: Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life in California the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled two thousand miles away in Chicago, where Aki’s older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier and moved to the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family’s reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train.

Join the Club, Buy the Book

Sign up for J-Sei’s Book Club and be added to the Book Club mailing list (put “Book Club” in your email’s subject line). Please encourage anyone interested to join! Our book discussion will be even further enriched by a diverse range of perspectives, for instance of different ages, races, and gender identities.

Copies of the hardcover edition are available for purchase from Eastwind Books, which Eastwind is very generously offering to Book Club members at a discounted price. Order the book online through Eastwind and type JSEI in the coupon field at cart checkout to get your 10% discount. Also, you can choose to pick up your copy at the store or arrange for shipping, or you can designate J-Sei for delivery/pick-up by typing your request into the Note to Seller comment box at cart checkout. We can also facilitate a Share-a-Book program that will allow members to share their copy of the book after they’ve finished reading it.

Book Club Format: Read the book at your own pace. As you’re reading, you can comment online about whatever strikes you and share with fellow Book Club members on the secure J-Sei Book Club webpage. Periodically I will check in with members by email to prompt online discussion about certain themes and aspects of the book. Then sometime around October or early November we’ll schedule a live Zoom meeting so members can get together to discuss the book.

Hope you can join us!

— Kathy Hashimoto, moderator

About the Author

Naomi Hirahara is the Edgar Award–winning author of the Mas Arai mystery series, including Summer of the Big Bachi, which was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and one of Chicago Tribune’s Ten Best Mysteries and Thrillers; Gasa Gasa Girl; Snakeskin Shamisen; and Hiroshima Boy. She is also the author of the LA-based Ellie Rush mysteries. A former editor of The Rafu Shimpo newspaper, she has co-written non-fiction books like Life after Manzanar and the award-winning Terminal Island: Lost Communities of Los Angeles Harbor.