Jamie Ford’s Hotel is a powerfully emotional coming of age historical novel that takes the reader back to the 1940’s in Seattle just after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The book seamlessly navigates back and forth between 1986 and the 1940’s as Henry Lee, a recently widowed Chinese American recalls the years of his youth and his first love.
Henry Lee is twelve years old and the only Chinese student in an all-white school. He gets bullied in his neighborhood by other Chinese children and bullied at school because he is different. His father is obsessed with the Japanese invasion of China and is a bitter enemy of all Japanese, even the Americans. At the same time, he lives in fear of being confused with the Japanese and forces his son to wear a button that says, “I am Chinese.”
School in intolerable for Henry until another non-white student enrolls in the school—a Japanese girl named Keiko. They work together in the cafeteria and become fast friends. Of course Henry has to hide their blossoming friendship from his family and keep them from finding out about his frequent excursions to the Japanese side of town.
Ford does an exemplary job of depicting Seattle’s ethnic neighborhoods and cultural attractions. He also shows great empathy for the children of immigrants who have to navigate between two cultures—the one at home and the one at school.
The bitter bullet of this novel is the evacuation of all the Japanese families and their internment in relocation camps in various states. Ford shows human nature at its best and at its worst, but does an incredible job of keeping politics out of it. We see events unfolding only through the eyes of these adolescents who pledge to be faithful to each other until they can be together again. I will not give away the details of their heartrending story. I will only say that relationships are tested beyond what most people would endure today, and in the end it is a story of forgiveness and redemption.
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