Protagonist Matajiro Fuse is one of the many Japanese who left their families behind in pursuit of an American fortune, in this case by prospecting for gold in Alaska. Once he finds that he can make a better living as a barber, he brings his family to join him, and eventually American-born children are added to the clan. The first of these, Toranosuke (nicknamed Thor by Scandinavian neighbors) inherits his father's adventurous spirit and leaves home for the first time at age 12 for a summer of salmon canning. Though he encounters racial prejudice, he is amazed to find himself more easily accepted than the Natives. This novel is a fine telling of the day-to-day life of a particular people whose experiences are not well known to most Americans.-- Debbie Tucker, Cincinnati Technical Coll., Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A combination of novel and memoir, this uneven story records the life of a first-generation American, like the author a Japanese barber's son raised in Washington State and Alaska in the early part of the century. Tora Fuse experiences frontier hardships, knows family solidarity and tension and finds racial prejudice and acceptance. (Eskimos stripped by the U.S. government of their rights presage what will happen in the '40s to his people.) His father's quest for gold ends with Tora, age 12, working in a salmon canning plant. Supposedly fictional characters feel remembered as though from life, reconstructed out of family myth or designed to deliver bits of history in speeches on subjects such as the origin of chopsticks. Descriptions range from wonderfully apt--a man has sideburns shaped like fish hooks--to inept--waves that chuckle, breezes that sing. As a whole, the book sags as fiction, and soars as popular history. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved