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4 out of 5 stars
By
MissSusie66
on
08-20-12
very good story
This was narrated by Rue McClanahan of Golden Girls fame and she did a good job but sometimes with someone so recognizable her voice almost gets in the way of the story because you are picturing her as all the characters instead of the characters speaking for themselves.
I am not sure what I was expecting when I started this book but what I got was a beautiful chaste love story between southern belle Sophie and Japanese American Mr. Oto. This was a beautifully written look at the south during the time of Pearl Harbor and everything changed for Mr. Oto and the women in his life his boss Miss Ann and his friend (and woman he loves) Miss Sophie. But this was so much more than a love story; it’s a friendship story and also a historical look at a very tough time especially for Japanese Americans and the people who cared about them, and the people who blamed them for everything.
This was a sweet story and even the “bad guy/woman” was redeemable she wasn’t so much a bad guy just an old busybody. My favorite character was Big Sally, or Queen Sally as she’d rather be called, she took such good care of everyone. I liked the friendships in this book between Sally, Sophie and Miss Ann.
This is a short, but good story , if you are a fan southern fiction and/or friendship stories I would recommend this one.
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5 of 6 people found this review helpful
5 out of 5 stars
By
Debbie
on
06-10-16
Southern to the Bone, Yet Beautifully So
Oh, my gracious, what a lovely southern tale of a middle aged woman in Georgia before and during WWII . . . beautiful Sophie, painting along the creek, secluded . . . and admired by Mr. Oto . . . having already lost her first love in WWI . . . Sophie's childhood friendship with little Sally, that ended because her mama said that the little black girl was "dirty", broke my heart . . . and mean old Ruth who was in everybody's business, yet she was in the church pew every Sunday . . . Miss Anne, Sophie's friend who is telling the story, and who eventually breaks every rule of polite society . . . Mr. Oto's sighting of the crane, the story that his father told him as a boy and his painting of the crane wife gave the story a fairy tale feeling . . . the narration was first rate . . . perfect . . . what Miss Anne did was extraordinary for the time, and made the book absolutely wonderful . . . and her dressing down of Ruth was long overdue . . . its been a long, long time since I've felt so satisfied after listening to a book . . . BRAVO!
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1 of 1 people found this review helpful