Book excerpt: The nine short stories in this collection reveal a portrait of three generations of Japanese-Americans trying to fit themselves into the fabric of American society. The author writes: "I wandered ghostlike amidst the mainstream of America, treading unaware of the cultural amnesia inflicted on my parents' generation by the internment and the atomic bomb." These tales chronicle the pains and hopes of family members reaching out in individual ways to understand themselves, their families, and their community. "Ruth Sasaki writes with great self-knowledge, with a sensitivity born of examined experience, and with a wonderfully humorous insight of the American ethnic experience."--Gus Lee, author of "China Boy"