Love and Infamy: A Novel of Pearl Harbor - Hardcover

Deford, Frank

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670829951 ISBN 13: 9780670829958

Publisher: Viking Adult, 1993

Synopsis

On the eve of World War II, two friends--Cotton Drake, an American raised by missionary parents in Japan, and Kiyoshi, a Japanese living in Hawaii--become caught up in conflicting loyalties, treachery, and forbidden romance. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Patriotism, Christianity, love, and lust complicate the lives of some very likable young people in Japan in the last years before Pearl Harbor. Deford, NPR commentator, novelist (Casey on the Loose, 1989, etc.), and sportswriter, tackles the Japanese and Japanese-ness in this consistently interesting story about two friends who are sucked into the heart of the plans for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Cotton Drake and Kiyoshi Okuno have known each other most of their lives. Cotton is the son of Episcopal missionaries whose Japanese education and childhood friendships have made him truly bicultural. He and Okuno go off to Yale and Harvard, planning to go into business together, and they make a successful start in Hawaii in the late 30's. But Cotton's religious leanings get the better of him and he returns to Japan as a missionary. At the same time, a friendship with the great Admiral Yamamoto draws the disappointed Kiyoshi into a job spying on the Americans, whom he knows so well and whom he so admires. Yamamoto thinks an attack on Pearl Harbor will keep the Americans out of a Pacific war, and Kiyoshi believes him enough to help. As Kiyoshi scouts out the US Navy, Cotton tries to save Japanese souls while his own is imperiled by a most un-Christian attraction to Kiyoshi's wife, Miyuki, who has her own fascinating history. Meanwhile, intimations of Yamamoto's designs lead Cotton to intrigue with a Tokyo prostitute and put his friendship with Kiyoshi to test after frightening test. There's a lot of business with a treacherous American diplomat who wants the war to start and a Japanese general who shares his eagerness. Everything boils down to a desperate race to warn the Yanks. Always interesting, occasionally affecting: Deford's ambition to show the run-up to the war from the Japanese side is largely fulfilled. There's no wretched translato-speak; the coincidences that are the convention of the genre don't distract; and the scenery fascinates. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Highly regarded sportswriter ( Everybody's All American ) and author of an affecting chronicle of his daughter's death ( Alex ), Deford debuts as a novelist with an engrossing story of political and personal intrigue that takes place in Japan before and during WW II, and that contrasts the irreconcilable gulf between cultures with the unbreakable bonds of love and friendship. In 1940, Japanese-born, Yale-educated Cotton Drake returns to his birthplace as a rookie Episcopal missionary. There he is briefly reunited with his lifelong friend, Harvard alumnus Kiyoshi Okuno, on leave from his job in Hawaii to marry Miyuki, sister of a mutual childhood friend, Takeo Serikawa, who as leader of a failed mutiny has committed seppuku . Soon afterward, Kiyoshi is sent back to Honolulu as a spy to facilitate Admiral Yamamoto's attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. Cotton, suspecting treachery and in turmoil over his own feelings for Miyuki, is inexorably drawn into the intrigue as both he and Kiyoshi become morally compromised by acts they perform in the name of patriotism. Right up to the surprising and suspenseful climax, the book rings with historical authenticity and vivid descriptions of exotic landscapes and Shinto ritual. There are sharp portraits of historical characters: Admiral Yamamoto, for instance, never sounds more believable than when he's using baseball as a metaphor for Japanese-American relations. The real coup is that, despite an oft-used setting, Deford has created fresh characters and a consistently captivating story of romance, politics and the clash of two cultures. 35,000 first printing; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0670829951
• ISBN 13: 9780670829958
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 576