Based on the author's own experiences, this award-winning novel was the first to tell the story of the evacuation, relocation, and dispersal of Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry during the Second World War.

Naomi Nakane -- sheltered, beloved -- is only five years old in 1941. Then comes Pearl Harbor, and before the end of that year, Naomi, forcibly separated from her mother, is watching bewildered as she and her family become "enemy aliens", persecuted and despised in their own land.