Presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early twentieth-century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage, and the prospect of wartime internment.

In six unforgettable, incantatory sections, the novel traces their new lives as "picture brides": the arduous voyage by boat, where the girls trade photos of their husbands and imagine uncertain futures in an unknown land ... their arrival in San Francisco and the tremulous first nights with their new husbands ... backbreaking toil as migrant workers in the fields and in the homes of white women ... the struggle to learn a new language and culture ... giving birth and raising children who come to reject their heritage . . . and, finally, the arrival of war, and the agonizing prospect of their internment.

In six unforgettable, incantatory sections, the novel traces their new lives as "picture brides": the arduous voyage by boat, where the girls trade photos of their husbands and imagine uncertain futures in an unknown land ... their arrival in San Francisco and the tremulous first nights with their new husbands, backbreaking toil as migrant workers in the fields and in the homes of white women ... the struggle to learn a new language and culture, giving birth and raising children who come to reject their heritage, and, finally, the arrival of war, and the agonizing prospect of their internment.

Presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early twentieth-century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage, and the prospect of wartime internment.

Presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early twentieth-century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage, and the prospect of wartime internment.

This collection of Ursula K. Le Guin's recent talks, essays, introductions is the best manual we have for exploring the worlds explored in recent fiction; the most useful guide to the country we're visiting, life.