Author(s): Maureen Lindley

General Fiction

Thirteen-year-old Satomi Baker is used to being different. It is 1939, and in rural west-coast California being half-white and half-Japanese gets you noticed. Her parents seem so happy together, and so proud to be American, but she has never felt she exactly fits in - even though her striking looks have caught the eye of the most popular boy at school. When war is declared, Satomi's father Aaron is one of the first to sign up, and he is sent to the base at Pearl Harbour. He never returns. News of the Japanese attack transmits through the Bakers' crackling radio. Satomi's strong, stoical mother Tamura is flung into a private realm of grief - while all around them the world changes irrevocably. The community that has tolerated its foreign residents for decades suddenly turns on them, and along with thousands of other Japanese-American citizens (and anyone with 'one drop of Japanese blood' in them) they are sent to a brutal labour camp in the wilderness which future generations will choose to forget. At Manzanar Satomi learns what it takes to survive, who she can trust, and what it means to be American. But it will be years before she will discover who she really is under the surface of her skin. A Girl Like You is her story, and the riveting and moving story of a lost generation.