Published March 9, 2021, Harry N. Abrams
Book description: "grief, mourning, and the joy of survival, inspired by a real phone booth in Japan with its disconnected “wind” phone, a place of pilgrimage and solace since the 2011 tsunami."
Yui makes a pilgrimage to the phone booth in the garden of Bel Gardia, at the foot of the Mountain of the Whale. Here people find solace in talking on the disconnected phone to the ones they lost in the tsunami of March 11, 2011, their voices carried away by the wind.
Book beginning:
Prologue
In the vast, steep garden of Bel Gardia, great gusts of wind lashed the plants.
The woman instinctively raised an elbow to her face, rounding her back. Then, almost immediately, she straightened up again.
She had arrived before dawn, and watched as the sun came up but the sun remained hidden....
Page 56:
"She's stopped talking, yes, but I'm optimistic, and so is the pediatrician."
The Friday 56. Find any sentence that grabs you on page 56 of your book. Post it, and add your URL to Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginnings at Rose City Reader.
