I enjoyed this story EVERGREEN as much as CLARK AND DIVISION. Naomi Hirahara tells a good mystery with Asian American characters and their lives. I knew the area in Los Angelos where the story takes place which was interesting. A good fast read.

While being fiction, the author utilizes historical places, people, and plausible actions of people based on history. A theme running through the book is the PTSD of Japanese Americans who served on the side of the Allies. So much history at times seems to overwhelm the fiction. Thanks to NetGalley for a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

A very well written sequel to Clark and Division. Naomi Hirahara knows how to capture your attention and keep it throughout the book. The mystery was well written and unpredictable. Because I'm Japanese and my dad was in a camp, I loved the references to Japanese foods and customs and the references to life in the camps.

I liked this sequel to Hirahara's "Clark and Division" more than her first award-winning novel. Once again she melds well-researched historical details with mystery. Aki and her family have returned to Los Angeles, their home before they were imprisoned in the internment camp, although to a new neighborhood. While the mystery here moves the plot forward, the real story is their readjustment as well as the more personal story of Aki and Art learning to live as husband and wife. Highly recommended for both mystery readers and those who want to learn more about the Japanese American post-WWII experience.

Canada and the United States both share a dark period of history that happened during World War II. Citizens of Japanese descent were ordered to give up their homes and businesses and sent to live in internment camps with harsh living conditions. In 2021, the Edgar Award-winning Japanese American crime fiction author Naomi Hirahara introduced Aki Ito and her family in the book Clark and Division. The book focused on their time in the Manzanar internment camp in California and subsequent release and relocation to Chicago. In her new book, Evergreen, it is 1946 and the Ito family have returned to California.

The setting of Los Angeles is critical to Evergreen. Even though the family is returning to their home city, nothing is quite the same. Other groups have moved into Japantown and its surrounding neighbourhoods. Businesses have been taken over by competitors. The place that they were homesick for no longer exists. Hirahara does a great job conveying that sense of loss. Through her descriptions, we feel the sadness of seeing strangers living in their old house and frustration with those who have taken over their businesses.

Hirahara also creates moments of hope and solidarity. There is a touching exchange between Aki and a potential landlord who happens to be Jewish. It is a small but powerful moment in the book. The characters form a connection that feels honest and genuine. One of the strengths in Hirahara’s writing is her ability to create these subtle but meaningful flashes of humanity that will stay with you after you finish the book.

When the story opens, Aki has found employment as a nurse’s aide at the Japanese hospital. She is still living with her parents. Her husband, Art Nakasone, is a soldier whose return is anticipated. While at work, Aki meets an elderly patient who is covered in bruises. She suspects Mr Watanabe is a victim of elder abuse. Imagine her surprise when she discovers that the patient’s son is her husband’s best friend. Art and Babe Watanabe met and bonded in boot camp before they were shipped overseas. Aki can’t understand why Babe is back and Art is not home yet.

Babe is not the only person that Aki met in Chicago who has relocated to LA. While working at a vaccine clinic for children living in a hostel, she encountered Hammer. He came across as a petty criminal and loner in Chicago, although he appears to be turning over a new leaf in LA. Hammer has a girlfriend and wants to become the legal guardian of his younger half-brother. Although Aki met both Babe and Hammer in Chicago, the men don’t really know one another.

Aki is overjoyed when Art returns home but the army has changed him. He now smokes, and although he suffers nightmares he refuses to share the trauma of the War with Aki. She learns that Babe was discharged early and had been hospitalised in the Pasadena Regional Hospital. Once again, Art avoids talking about what happened overseas. He eventually finds a part-time job at Rafu Shimpo, a Japanese newspaper that is still published in Los Angeles and which the author Naomi Hirahara used to edit.

Soon, Mr Watanabe is back in hospital, this time with a gunshot wound. When he dies on the operating table, the hospital is unable to contact Babe to notify him of his father’s death. Aki volunteers to track him down. Because of her earlier suspicions about Babe she also wonders if he is responsible for his father’s death. When some men who identify themselves as LAPD show up at their house looking for Art and asking about Babe, Aki becomes even more determined to find Babe and to figure out who is responsible. She convinces Hammer to help her out.

Aki’s search for the truth broadens her view of the world and increases her self-awareness. Aki is the main character in Evergreen and the story is told from her perspective, which may not always be accurate. Hirahara does a great job in giving depth to her characters. She creates living, breathing individuals who are impacted by their life experiences and those around them.

It is apparent that Hirahara did extensive research while writing this book. She manages to weave in other significant events that were happening in post-war Los Angeles and America, bringing history to life through her tales of Aki and her friends and family. It feels natural as the character-driven plot unfolds. Evergreen is a wonderful example of historical crime fiction. It is a crime story that reflects the social injustice that happened to Japanese Americans.

After reading the first book “Clark and Division” in this series, I looked forward to reading another book by this author. In this book Aki and her family have left Chicago and returned back to California to pick up their lives again. After the father of an old friend of Aki’s husband is murdered, Aki is afraid her husband will be tangled up in the investigation.

I enjoyed reading this book for the historical fiction part, the author always draws me in with the descriptions of the location, time period and makes me care about the characters. It was what made the book great the mystery however was not to my liking. It felt chaotic, a lot of back and forth of the main character of getting involved or not. The pace of the story felt off to me. Sometimes it was fast and other parts dragged.
Overall a good read for me, but not as great as the first book.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy!

Evergreen by Naomi Hirahara is the second of the author's books featuring Aki, following Clark and Division. This one has Aki and her family back in Los Angeles post-World War II, and this mystery is so rich with detail. The author talks quite a bit about the sources and references she used to research this at the end, and the detail and knowledge pays off in creating an immersive story. There is a lot to learn in this one alongside the excellent plot, as the background to this one focuses on the challenges and treatment the Japanese-American community faced when returning to the coast post internment and forced relocation. I have read both historical and contemporary works by this author, and whichever you prefer you're in for something exceptional.

An interesting look at life for Japanese Americans after WWII,
Hirahara dies a good job of ushering in the complexities and complications of life for her characters after WWII, especially on the west coast.
I liked the mystery angle and was perplexed about who the culprit actually was.
It’s a worthwhile read for its context and cultural relativity.

The follow up to Hirahara’s spectacular Clark and Division finds the Ito family, released from detention camp and the follow up resettlement in Chicago, back in 1946 Los Angeles. After the Japanese were sent to camps, their homes and businesses were taken over, and they’ve returned to try and build up their lives again. Our heroine, Aki, works as a nurse’s aide and is waiting for her husband Art to return from the war. She and her parents have found a small home to rent which the two couples will share.

If the first novel was about Aki’s discovery of herself and her own personal strength after the death of her beloved sister, Rose, the second novel is about she and Art, as newlyweds, learning to live together and adjust to their new reality. Art has left home and family back in Chicago where he and Aki met, and the Itos are adjusting to post war, post camp life, with all that entails. Someone else lives in their former home. Mr. Ito’s business is gone and he wants to reclaim it. Meanwhile, Art is recovering from the trauma of war. He and Aki aren’t communicating too well, and it’s causing problems.

One of the flash points in their relationship is Art’s war buddy, Babe, who earned Aki’s eternal distrust by dropping the camera full of their only wedding photos. He’s in Los Angeles, and Aki encounters him in the hospital, where his elderly father has been brought in, covered with bruises. Aki suspects Babe. When the father later turns up dead and Babe disappears, Aki decides to pursue it on her own, without telling Art. Art is busy with a job at the Japanese newspaper, the Rafu Shimpo, based in LA (the paper is still in publication today).

Aki feels uncomfortable and uneducated around Art’s friends, who are a mix of liberal journalist types, and she’s determined to solve this puzzle. The lack of communication between the newlyweds has its consequences, however, making the scenes between the couple some of the most painful of the novel.
Also painful, however, are the many stories of the hard working Japanese men and women who live is horrible circumstances as they try and find a footing after the war. The descriptions of some of the hastily created trailer camps where Japanese were forced to live is truly horrifying, and it turns out that Aki, during her investigations, is able to step up as a nurse and help out a few of the folks she encounters.

The portrait of the racism and discrimination endured by the Japanese (who are sharing their former areas of town with African Americans who have relocated to LA), made me think after I closed the book that racism is the essential crime and tragedy of our country. It’s tentacles are everywhere. While Hirahara has not written a polemic, she has written a social justice novel, illuminating a part of our history that’s difficult to read about, but essential to our knowledge of our country. What makes it a novel are the characters – Aki, Art and Babe are all finely drawn and unforgettable. The moral ambiguity faced by her characters makes them human, and to me, more believable. Hirahara is a wonderful writer.

The second book in the Japantown Mystery series, follows Aki, her husband Art, and her parents as the move back to Los Angeles from Chicago. Now that the war is over, they try to rebuild their lives but nothing is the same as they left it and they find themselves navigating a new world. When Aki chances upon her husband's friend Babe while working as a nurse's aide at the Japanese Hospital, this starts a chain of events that leads to a murder. As the police turn their investigation towards Art, Aki is determined to keep her husband and parents out of harms way and starts to investigate on her own, even if that leads her into dangerous situations. Overall, an interesting mystery that focuses on the issues returning Japanese Americans faced when trying to rebuild their lives after being forced into internment camps during the war.

This enticing historical mystery follows Japanese American Aki Nakasone and her family after their detainment in a World War II concentration camp. While working as a nurse, Aki has an upsetting encounter with a man from her husband’s past. When the same man goes missing after a murder, Aki suspects foul play. Worried that her husband could face blame for the crime, she sets out the solve the case and clear her husband’s name. I really love the unique setting/perspective of this series. May it continue!

I love Hirahara's passion for history and the in depth research that give her books such a rich sense of time and place. This one, set in post-WWII Los Angeles, really captures the frustration of loss and on-going racism endured by Americans of Japanese descent. The story here is well constructed and horribly believable.

In the novel, Aki repeatedly refers back to incidents that took place in the prior book, Clark and Division. Given the trauma her family endured because of the incidents taking place in that first novel, it is, of course, only natural to do so. However, for me, the level wasn't quite right. I never completely felt the hole left be Rose's tragic demise, so the regular references felt hollow. I guess I wanted Hirahara to either wallow in it or let in go. That being said, wallowing would have hindered the flow of the current story, and letting it go would have been calloused. I'm hard to please.

Thanks to NetGalley and Soho Crime for making an advance copy of this title available for an honest review.

Thank you to Net Galley for providing an early copy of Evergreen by Naomi Hirahara

Evergreen continues the deeply moving chronicle of a Japanese-American family who has suffered the humility of a forced internment camp during World War II along with the loss of their livelihood in California. The war has ended---now thousands must try to put their lives back together.

Aki Nakasone (she has married Art) has left Clark and Division in Chicago and returned to Los Angeles with her parents and awaits the return of Art from the service. In the course of her nursing work she comes across an elderly man who appears to have been abused. While investigating the man and her son, Aki will encounter the justice system in California, the rise of organized crime and the ominous growth of the Ku Klux Klan. She never gives up on trying to solve multiple murders at the risk of her own safety.

The factual background in the novel is ongoing throughout the writing and adds a wealth of information that readers may encountering for the first time; for example "escheat" was an organized plan by the State of California to forcibly take property from Japanese-Americans in internment camps. Another example is the use of young Japanese boys to right each other with adults betting on the outcomes. In addition, Aki must deal with the post-traumatic stress of returned soldier Art who has difficulty sharing his war experiences.

Just as in Clark and Division, Aki's world is complicated and often dangerous, yet she never uses an excuse to find the truth.

MIsplaced and misunderstood.

Aki Ito and her family no longer stand on solid ground. Nearly everything they have owned has been sidelined or completely taken away. The familiar soon becomes the unfamiliar as the Ito family, like so many Japanese and Japanese Americans, have been rounded up and taken to encampments during World War II here in the United States.

Soon they will be sent to live in Chicago, a bustling strange city so different from life in Southern California. It's here that Aki meets her future husband, Art Nakasone. This story is beautifully told in the first book of the series, Clark and Division. Although Evergreen can be read as a standalone, you don't want to miss the transition told so well by Naomi Hirahara in the first book.

Aki, Art, and Aki's parents move back to Southern California trying to pick up the pieces of a broken past after the war in 1946. Art served in the U.S.Army and suffers from what we would call PTSD today. They've lost their original house, and without much recourse, they rent a small house on Evergreen Street. Aki gave up her plans to attend nursing school and has become a nurse's aide instead. Art works at the local Japanese American newspaper as a journalist. Money is tight.

When an injured elderly Japanese man is brought into the hospital, Aki recognizes the son. It's Babe who was their best man at the wedding in Chicago. Aki has always been suspicious of Babe unlike Art who served with Babe during the war. When Mr. Watanabe is brought back with a deadly gunshot wound the next time, Aki suspects Babe. But can she prove it? Babe no longer fits in the best man category. In fact, Babe may be mixed up with some questionable characters who'll bring danger along with them.

Evergreen is a solid portrayal of the severe impact of the encampments during the war. Naomi Hirahara has researched the aftermath extensively. But her telling is wrapped up in these finely tuned characters who reflect loss but also reflect a strong resilience. The weight of mistrust is felt within the Japanese American community who are forced to create a new "normal". And, as readers, we'll find ourselves more in tune with their plight thanks to the superb writing of Naomi Hirahara. A top-notch mystery feathered throughout this storyline makes it even grander.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Soho Crime and to the talented Naomi Hirahara for the opportunity.

Aki and her family are back in Los Angeles after being held in an internment camp and then relocated to Chicago. Having lost everything when they went to the camps they are still better off than many. She works at a hospital and it is there that she runs into her husband's good friend back from the war.
He has brought in his father who was beaten and this turns to murder leading Aki on a twisted path to find out what has happened to this old man and if her husband's friend is involved. This historical mystery sheds a pale light on the injustice and racial tensions towards Japanese Americans as well as the migration of African Americans from the south. They were Americans and fought in the war but were treated as second class citizens, stripped of their personal property and dignity. The perfect blend of historical fiction and crime noir. Readers of the author's previous book CLARK AND DIVISION will enjoy the continuation of the family in new surroundings. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

This is a mystery about Japanese Americans returning home to Little Tokyo in California after their stay at the Manzanar detention center and living in Chicago for a few years. The author shows the difficulties and prejudice faced as they try to piece their lives back together while finding their houses and possessions gone. A mystery and murder which Aki to try to solve while attempting to protect her husband who has just returned from the war. This is a good historical mystery with secrets and unsavory characters. #Evergreen #NaomiHirahara #NetGalley

Evergreen by Naomi Hirahara shines a light on the post-war struggles of Japanese American citizens as they return to Little Tokyo in Los Angeles and try to rebuild their lives. The forced relocation to internment camps is over, but not the suffering of those who are still put into crowded refugee camps as they deal with the loss of property and ongoing racism. Hirahara brings all this into sharp focus as Aki Ito and her family, freshly moved from Chicago, begin their new lives. Aki suspects that her husband's best friend from the 442nd Regimental Combat team is involved in criminal activities. As she uncovers deeply buried secrets, danger creeps closer to her and her family. The crime story is riveting, but what really impressed me was how the difficult transition from both combat and internment are portrayed with such heartfelt fervor. The passages concerning the grief and sadness of elderly Japanese Americans who endured years of internment, only to return to find their old live vanished, are still with me. Highly recommended.

In a followup to the wonderful CLARK AND DIVISION, Hirahara builds a mystery around the situation the characters find themselves in after World War II has ended and the Japanese-Americans who had been herded into internment camps were turned loose in a world where the discrimination they had faced still existed and the homes, businesses, and lives that had been torn from them were not restored. This is a less familiar part of the Japanese-American experience than the camps for most Americans, so learning about it through this thoroughly-researched historical fiction is eye-opening.

Returning from Chicago to Los Angeles has been tough for Aki and her family. Though she has been finally reunited with her husband after his wartime experiences in Europe, marriage is proving to be surprisingly challenging, with her husband suffering from nightmares most nights, and her father is bent on recovering his business in the flower market even though the prospects are dim. Struggling to find a place to live, they finally are able to take the place of a Jewish man who is moving out, giving them a modest foothold in a mixed neighborhood near the Japanese community hospital where Aki works, and her husband finds a job at a newspaper, satisfying work for him though the pay is low.

When an elderly man is admitted to Aki's hospital, she notices he is badly bruised, and she finds out he's the father of Babe Watanabe, her husband's friend and the best man at their wedding. She never warmed to Babe, and now it seems he has brutally abused his father. Then, as plots do, it thickens, and shady characters show up to Aki's door looking for Babe. Aki has to figure out what is going on, and in the process we get a tour of the neighborhoods that went through abrupt demographic changes during and after the war, including a vivid depiction of Bronzeville (when Blacks from the South temporarily occupied the neighborhood once home to Japanese Americans) and the Winona trailer camp, a notoriously grim temporary housing camp for people who lost everything, were incarcerated, and have been thrust back into life with little that could be called a home.

The afterword provides an encyclopedic tour of resources that informed Hirahara's fictional world, a seminar's worth of knowledge. The beauty of the book is that all of it is conveyed through the story without the author ever resorting to infodumps or the kind of stilted dialogue that is only there to provide historical context. It's very well done. I look forward the next installment in the series, knowing I will learn a lot while swept up in a story.

In this sequel to Clark and Division, the Ito family return to Los Angeles along with other Japanese Americans and find that their homes and businesses have been taken over. Aki's husband is troubled by his combat experiences, putting a strain on their new marriage - a situation that is complicated when she suspects his best man of murder.

This historical mystery explores an interesting facet of the postwar era, showing the struggles of Japanese Americans to regain their lives in California during a time of changing demographics. Black southerners had also moved into the area, competing for housing with the Asian population while also facing racism. Similarly, the Jewish community was relocating at the time. A number of real life area notables make appearances, as described in the Author’s Note.

The amateur sleuthing is integrated naturally, with Aki looking into the death of an elderly patient at the hospital where she is a nurse. The progression of her investigation is realistic, and she makes reasonable connections. She even consults a private detective when she needs background information.

Recommended for those who enjoy mysteries rich with local and historical detail.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the review copy.