Garden of Stones. Sophie Littlefield

Garden of Stones - Sophie  Littlefield


Скачать книгу
>

      In the dark days of war, a mother makes the ultimate sacrifice

      Lucy Takeda is just fourteen years old, living in Los Angeles, when the bombs rain down on Pearl Harbor. Within weeks, she and her mother, Miyako, are ripped from their home, rounded up—along with thousands of other innocent Japanese-Americans—and taken to the Manzanar prison camp.

      Buffeted by blistering heat and choking dust, Lucy and Miyako must endure the harsh living conditions of the camp. Corruption and abuse creep into every corner of Manzanar, eventually ensnaring beautiful, vulnerable Miyako. Ruined and unwilling to surrender her daughter to the same fate, Miyako soon breaks. Her final act of desperation will stay with Lucy forever...and spur her to sins of her own.

      Bestselling author Sophie Littlefield weaves a powerful tale of stolen innocence and survival that echoes through generations, reverberating between mothers and daughters. It is a moving chronicle of injustice, triumph and the unspeakable acts we commit in the name of love.

      Garden

      of Stones

      Sophie Littlefield

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For Julie

      Contents

       Chapter 1

       Chapter 2

       Chapter 3

       Chapter 4

       Chapter 5

       Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

       Chapter 25

       Chapter 26

       Chapter 27

       Chapter 28

       Chapter 29

       Chapter 30

       Chapter 31

       Chapter 32

       Chapter 33

       Chapter 34

       Chapter 35

       Chapter 36

       Acknowledgments

       A Conversation with Sophie Littlefield

       Questions for Discussion

      1

      San Francisco

      Tuesday, June 6, 1978

      Reg Forrest lowered himself painfully into his desk chair, which was as hard, used and creaky as he was. The dark brown leather was cracked and worn, the brass nails missing in places. When he found the chair in the alley, he thought it had a certain masculine appeal, like something a hotshot lawyer might own. But it hadn’t taken long for the thing to seem as shoddy as the rest of his office.

      Reg flipped the corners of the stack of papers on his desk and sighed. The coffee wouldn’t be ready for a few minutes yet.

      Dust motes swirled in the first rays of morning sunlight, causing Reg to blink and then to sneeze. He had positioned his desk under the only window in the room, a filthy pane of glass at ceiling level that looked out into a corrugated-aluminum well half-filled with garbage and dead leaves. Above the window well was the same alley where he’d found the chair, a narrow, stinking passage between the DeSoto Hotel and the building next door. Still, early in the morning, depending on the season, an errant sunbeam or two found its way down into the room, and for that small grace, Reg occasionally remembered to be grateful.

      Beyond the office door, there was silence. The gym opened at seven, which was still a half hour away. He’d already unlocked the doors, but the half-dozen men who’d gather by seven would wait for him to come prop them open. They knew each other’s habits. Early morning drew the shift workers, the boys getting in a few rounds on the bag after clocking out. Night security, deliverymen, dockworkers—they were quieter, as a rule, than the ones who came later. Other than the occasional grunt or curse, they had little to say as they worked through their circuits.

      It had been several years since Reg himself had taken to the practice ring. He’d broken the same hand three times, and his shoulder was never right anymore. The ligaments in his back were for shit, and there was a scar like a zipper running over his left knee. He was fifty-nine years old and he’d spent three of his six decades here, in the basement of the DeSoto Hotel, building Reg’s Gym up


Скачать книгу