Kwaidan Book Club- The Samurai's Garden

Hello All! As selected during the last Kwaidan meeting our April read will be The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama. Join us on April 9th as we discuss Stephen, Matsu and Sachi's beautiful tale, set in the coastal town of Tarumi (Japan) on the eve of WWII, where Stephen, a young Chinese painter, travels to recover from tuberculosis.

*Please help support Tubby & Coo's Mid-City Book Shop by ordering your copy through them. Make sure to mention that it is for the Kwaidan Book Club (Japan Society of New Orleans's Book Club) for a special discount :-)*

ABOUT THE BOOK:
The daughter of a Chinese mother and a Japanese father, Tsukiyama uses the Japanese invasion of China during the late 1930s as a somber backdrop for her unusual story about a 20-year-old Chinese painter named Stephen who is sent to his family's summer home in a Japanese coastal village to recover from a bout with tuberculosis. Here he is cared for by Matsu, a reticent housekeeper and a master gardener. Over the course of a remarkable year, Stephen learns Matsu's secret and gains not only physical strength, but also profound spiritual insight. Matsu is a samurai of the soul, a man devoted to doing good and finding beauty in a cruel and arbitrary world, and Stephen is a noble student, learning to appreciate Matsu's generous and nurturing way of life and to love Matsu's soulmate, gentle Sachi, a woman afflicted with leprosy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Born to a Chinese mother and a Japanese father in San Francisco, Gail Tsukiyama lives in El Cerrito, California and has been the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award and the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. Her novels include Women of the Silk (1991), The Samurai's Garden (1995), Night of Many Dreams (1998), The Language of Threads (1999), Dreaming Water (2002), and The Street of a Thousand Blossoms (2007).