The Turtle House by Amanda Churchill

It's spring 1999, and twenty-five-year-old Lia Cope and her prickly seventy-three-year-old grandmother, Mineko, are sharing a bedroom in Curtain, Texas, the ranching town where Lia grew up and Mineko came to live as a Japanese war bride. Both women are at a turning point, unable to find the path forward. Though Lia never felt especially close to her grandmother, the two bond over late-night conversations. Mineko tells stories of her early life in Japan, of the war that changed everything, and of her two great loves: a man named Akio Sato and an abandoned Japanese country estate they called the turtle house, where their relationship took root. As Minejko reveals more of her past-tales of innocent swimming lessons that blossom into something more, a friendship nurtured across oceans, totems saved and hidden, the heartreak of love lost too soon - Lia comes to understand the depth of her granmother's pain and sacrifice and sees her Texas family in a new light. Lia also recognizes that it's she who needs to come clean-about the budding career she abandoned and the mysterious man who keeps calling. A story of intergenerational friendship, familyy, coming-of-age, identity, and love, The Turtle House illuminates the hidden lives we lead, the secrets we hold close, and what it means to find home again when it feels lost forever.
 
4.4****