A book recommended by Risé

Did you remember to change your clocks?  Or are you already running late?

Risé Recommends ~ I'm beginning a new series of books recommended by my friend Risé, a retired librarian.  This is a book in the Crown Center's library that she recently recommended to me:

Plum Wine ~ by Angela Davis-Gardner, 2006, fiction, 352 pages

Bottles of homemade plum wine link two worlds, two eras, and two lives through the eyes of Barbara Jefferson, a young American teaching at a Tokyo university.  When her surrogate mother, Michi, dies, Barbara inherits an extraordinary gift:  a tansu chest filled with bottles of homemade plum wine wrapped in sheets of rice paper covered in elegant calligraphy — one bottle for each of the last twenty years of Michi’s life.  Why did Michi leave her memoirs to Barbara, who cannot read Japanese?

Seeking a translator, Barbara turns to an enigmatic pottery artist named Seiji, who will offer her a companionship as tender as it is forbidden.  But as the two lovers unravel the mysteries of Michi’s life, a story that draws them through the aftermath of World War II and the hidden world of the hibakusha — Hiroshima survivors — Barbara begins to suspect that Seiji may be hiding the truth about Michi’s past — and a heartbreaking secret of his own.

I have questions:

• What is a Tansu chest?  Tansu are traditional portable storage chests from Japan.  In Japanese traditional houses, there were no fixed chairs, tables, or pieces of furniture in the living space.  Tansu were intended as mobile cabinetry and used to store objects of daily use, clothes, and personal items.
• What are hibakusha?  Atomic Bomb survivors are referred to in Japanese as hibakusha, which translates literally as "bomb-affected-people."

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz

hosts The Sunday Salon.