What the Scarecrow Said (First Edition)

Stewart David Ikeda's epic novel of a Japanese American family begins with the birth of its hero aboard the ship that brings his parents to the United States and ends in the aftermath of a great national shame: the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II.
William Fujita is cast out of California, uprooted from the family nursery business he loved so much, "relocated" into an armed prison camp, and beset by almost unutterable loss. Barred from his home, he finds himself on the cold slopes of New England in the closing months of the Second World War. There, he must battle grief, prejudice, and his own conscience to survive and to reconcile himself with families old and new.
As he searches for the mysterious Yoneko - a young woman who holds the key to connecting his shattered past to his uncertain future - Fujita meets unexpected allies in a small Massachusetts farming town. Working for Margaret Kelly, a fiery widow who discovers the grief and passion beneath his reserved surface, Fujita endeavors to prepare for planting that unpromising tract known as Widow's Peak. Together with Margaret, a war widow named Livvie, and her scared and damaged young son, Garvin, Fujita becomes an unwilling participant in an impromptu family bonded by sacrifice, intrigue, and unanticipated love.

Stewart D. Ikeda has twice been a recipient of the Hopwood Award from the University of Michigan, where he earned his MFA in writing. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in such publications as Story, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and the anthology Voices of the Xiled.

He teaches writing and Asian-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.