The Hidden Flower

In occupied Japan, a young Japanese woman falls in love with an American serviceman whose family owns an estate in Virginia. Her father understands the dangers better than either lover: he once practised medicine in the United States but returned to Kyoto when wartime incarceration threatened people of Japanese ancestry. Despite family opposition, the couple marry and travel to an America where state law and social custom refuse to treat their union as ordinary.

The birth of a child does not dissolve the pressures created by race, nationality and the recent war. Each partner discovers that private affection cannot by itself overcome inherited assumptions about loyalty and belonging. Moving between postwar Japan and the segregated United States, the novel examines interracial marriage through the unequal choices available to a woman separated from her country and a man whose privileges cannot protect the family he has created.