A tree that remembered what two families tried to forget.
While this novel is a work of fiction, its inspiration comes from real history. My father served in the U.S. Army during World War II on a Pacific island, and growing up, he told me about the wartime memorabilia American soldiers took from Japanese troops. Years later, I watched a documentary about the OBON SOCIETY — a non-profit dedicated to returning personal battlefield flags (Yosegaki Hinomaru) back to Japanese families as an act of reconciliation. That deeply moving mission inspired me to write this story — and because my stories always weave in the transformative power of art, woodcarving became the bridge that brings two families together.
Sawyer is a master woodcarver and a WWII veteran who has spent sixty years burying what happened on a Pacific island — including one unfinished carving he keeps locked away, unable to either finish it or let it go.
Then his grandson, Ken, falls in love with Belle — whose grandfather, Benjiro, fought on the other side of that same war. As the two families are pulled together by an unexpected engagement, the past starts surfacing faster than the wedding plans can outrun it. Sawyer and Benjiro have spent six decades avoiding each other's very existence, and the closer the young couple gets to their happily ever after, the harder that becomes to sustain.
What follows isn't a story about who won or lost a war. It's about the one piece Sawyer has never been able to carve — and what it finally takes for two old soldiers to sit down, face each other, and finish it together.
