Kuroshio: The Blood of Foxes [Paperback]

Terry Watada (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2008

The Kuroshio is the “Black Current,” which Japanese immigrants believed brought them safely across the Pacific Ocean to a new life in North America. This vividly imagined novel explores the dark reaches of Issei (Japanese immigrant) life in North America prior to World War II. A picture bride from Japan, disenchanted with her loveless marriage in her adopted homeland, turns to an Issei crime boss for help in dealing with a senseless tragedy. Full of unexpected twists and flashes of narrative color, Terry Watada’s novel combines historic fact with all the intrigue of a modern-day murder mystery.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Somewhere within this fashionably fractured narrative, a based-on-real-events murder mystery is struggling to get out. The second work of fiction from historian, poet, playwright and novelist Watada revolves around the 1940 deaths of 16-year-old Mariko Miyamoto and her degenerate gambler father, Jin. Although the official story is that Jin murdered his daughter and was shortly thereafter killed by his gangster creditors, Watada imagines a more noir scenario, focusing his attention on Mariko's mother, Yoshiko, and local crime boss Etsuji Morii, tracing their respective journeys to and sojourns in Canada from 1905 to 1940. Yoshiko is determined to create the life she had always imagined in the New World, persevering despite the abuses heaped on her by her husband and the disappearance of her lover, a Morii associate, after her husband's death. Morii, meanwhile, already suspected in the murder by the police, is further drawn in when Yoshiko comes to him for help. Though the prose sometimes feels like it belongs in a history text—there are numerous digressions on the situation of the Japanese in early 20th-century Canada—the novel at its best recalls the works of Hammett or Cain. (Mar.)
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Review

A historically insightful first novel about the lesser-known history of Vancouver's Japanese Canadian community prior to its destruction by the enforced evacuation and internment of its citizens. Terry Watada is a superb storyteller.
—Jim Wong-Chu, Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop (Jim Wong-Chu Jim Wong-Chu 20071031)

Murder, sexual intrigue, and broken dreams combine to create an intense depiction of Vancouver's Second World War-era Japanese-Canadian community.
―Quill & Quire (Quill & Quire 20080114)

Seamlessly blends aspects of Canadian history with a fictional tale of survival and mobster drama.
―Nexus (Nexus 20080128)

A continuously engrossing read.
―Nikkei Voice (Nikkei Voice 20080229)

Kuroshio is many layered and written in a poetic style that is a sheer joy to the senses; it is both a complex and compelling murder mystery and a grim multi layered psychological drama as duelling civilizations clash and individuals are caught between their naïve dreams and harsh reality.
―Canadian Immigrant (Canadian Immigrant )

The novel at its best recalls the works of Dashiell Hammett or James M. Cain.
―Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly )

Told in a literary style that draws from Watada's background as an historian and poet, Kuroshio takes readers across continents and generations in search of the truth of the immigrant experience.
―Fast Forward (Calgary) (Fast Forward )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1551522330
• ISBN-13: 978-1551522333
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,271,211 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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