The book for the 2020 Big Read for Union & Wallowa counties is Julie Otsuka's "When the Emperor Was Divine".
Beautifully, heartbreakingly written, this story brings us inside the experience of the internment of the Japanese during WWII.
The terse immediacy of the language evokes classic haiku: spare, brilliant, vivid.
Watch for community events around the Big Read!
Warning: there is graphic violence portrayed in the book.
Note: David Tift's mother Kay worked as a schoolteacher at the Tule Lake internment camp down by Klamath Falls. When I ask her about it, mostly she remembers the ever present alkali dust, and no trees.
