POINT REYES Love in a Time of War
About this book
When Harvard Law School student Frank Howland shows up at the Caboto ranch on California's Point Reyes scarcely a week before the attack on Pearl Harbor, his advent turns out to be far more than a temporary stop on a cross-country journey. From the start Frank is taken with the daughter of the family, nineteen-year-old Angela Caboto. She in turn is in love with Haru Kimura, a young Japanese-American, who, as a ranch hand, is Frank's bunkhouse mate and, quite soon, his confidant. Angela's brother, seventeen-year-old Stefano ("Call me Steve") doesn't much like Angela and Haru's mutual attraction. But her parents, patriarch Gustavo and his wife Maria, who calls Frank "Francesco" take the situation in stride. Like Frank, Haru is seeking a larger world, or at least one less confining than that of his family, first generation Japanese who own and work a vegetable farm near Petaluma. Haru tells Frank that he and Angela are saving up to elope to Hawaii where mixed-race couples are more tolerated. An aspiring writer and open-minded, Frank has no objection except that he is increasingly smitten by Angela, by herself-possession, her wit, and her courage. But his sense of honor and his regard for and growing friendship with Haru keep him from any overt declaration of his feelings. Not that he doesn't inadvertently betray himself through glances, chance remarks, and his willingness to help the family beyond farm work. Frank's sense of honor is severely tested when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Anti-Japanese feelings, never far from the surface, grow extreme and leave Haru vulnerable. Too high-minded for any obvious betrayal of his friend, Frank is nevertheless tempted. But as he reminds himself more than once, all is not fair in love and war. As the round-ups for the internment begin, a local deputy sheriff and FBI agent visit the ranch. But they are interested in the Cabotos, whom they mistake for Italian nationals. (They are Italian-Swiss.) Frank helps Haru to hide in an abandoned hut on the property. It proves an uncertain and temporary refuge. The Cabotos and all they have worked for become increasingly at risk as the shadows of war deepen and a harrowing fear grips a region bracing for invasion. Point Reyes is a story about honor, love, loss, war and place. Along the way, it examines, sometimes directly, sometimes head-on, what it means to be an American.