Silent Honor

Silent Honor by Danielle Steel The doyenne of bestseller
lists weaves another romantic story in her 38th novel a
tale of separated families and shattered lives set against
one of the most morally reprehensible events in U.S.
history: the internment of Japanese-Americans during WW
II. In 1941 18-year-old Hiroko Takashimaya the beautiful
painfully shy daughter of a modern-thinking professor and
a tradition-bound mother is sent from her home in Kyoto to
live in California with her American cousins and attend a
prestigious womens college. Terribly homesick yet
determined to make her parents proud dutiful Hiroko begins
to adjust to her new life and even does the unthinkable
when she falls in love with Peter Jenkins a handsome
American professor. The joys of Peters love painfully
contrast with the humiliation Hiroko suffers at the hands
of her racially prejudiced school mates but worse is to
come when war breaks out and Hiroko and her cousins are
sent to segregated camps. Separated from Peter now a
soldier fighting in Europe Hiroko sheds her sheltered
girlhood innocence and evolves into a strong independent
woman. Steels slapdash prose and stereotypical
characterization produce a formulaic tale albeit more
earnest and didactic than her usual fare but she does
succeed in telling a poignant story