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THE TIES THAT BIND

WHY SHE LEFT US
By Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
HarperCollins, 295 pp $24

One chapter towards the end of Rahna Reiko Rizzuto's debut novel,"Why She Left Us," is titled "Shikata Ga Nai." A few pages into the chapter, Emi Okada, the supernova around which the other characters orbit, explains to her daughter Mariko: "'You know,' she said, 'my mother had a saying. "Shikata ga nai." She used it a lot, especially during the war. It means,"It can't be helped."'"

This is a very familiar phrase for Japanese, because it’s an all-purpose repository for anything that could be described as an act of God, a fluke of nature or more commonly, a man-made mess. It’s all about accepting what might appear as wrong -- or worse -- and resigning yourself to having the all-too-human element of emotion scarring your psyche.

“Why She Left Us” is an examination of how the emotional fallout of this phrase has infected three generations of the Okada family, starting with the first-generation immigrants Mitsuo Okada and his wife Kaori, their children Will Emi and Jack, and their children.

Rizzuto tells the epic story, which starts before World War II and ends in 1990, with skill, vision and verbal dexterity - her deft telling of the Okada family’s cross-generational breakdown is an intense dig into psychological archeology.

The story’s revealed in novel ways, with pieces told from the perspective of four of the characters in non-linear fashion. Like archeology, the story emerges rather flows. The reader has to assemble the truth about the Okada family from memories preserved as shattered artifacts, jumping back and forth in time, place and voice - each perspective even exists within its own set of storytelling conventions. Kaori speaks to Mariko, her granddaughter from the grave in first-person passages that read like letters to Mari; the troubled grandson Eric’s and uncle Jack’s chapters are told in second-person present tense; Mariko’s story’s told in more conventional third-person past tense.

The holistic tale is simple: A Japanese American immigrant family in California finds itself imprisoned at the Amache Relocation Camp near Granada, Colorado, during World War II. Each of the Okada children have different experiences - Emi, clearly the wild child, has already is an unwed mother who has given up her son Eric for adoption. But as war looms, Kaori brings Eric back from his adopted family to raise with his birth family. Emi comes and goes from this nuclear family, giving birth during the war to her daughter, leaving her also with her mother and later coming back to claim just Mariko to take with her new husband to Hawaii.

Throughout the book, Mari is the protagonist who’s curious about her past, and who eventually discovers the secret of Eric, who she had been told all her life was her cousin. The plot is actually about the need for both disclosure and closure about the unspoken, unresolved wounds of past.

The fragmented memories suits herky-jerky pace of the story. And, the different points of view serve as Rizzuto’s verbal playgrounds - there are terrific passages of dialogue that read like a killer screenplay (hint, hint), striking images and lusciously crafted passages everywhere.

In the very first chapter, when Eric thinks his mother Emi has finally come back to take him with her, just the sound of his name unleashes his emotions. “When at last she says his name, the woman’s voice splashes into Eric’s chest, cooling his insides down in a rush that reaches his toes. It floods his eyes, too, blurring the perfect lines in her face.”

Longing lingers throughout Eric’s story, as he grows up with his surrogate family of his grandmother, grandfather and uncle Jack. At one point Rizzuto writes, “Families, Eric thinks, are deadly.”

He grows up a troubled youth but settles down finally with a wife and children by the time Mariko undertakes her journey to discover the truth about herself and her family. Near the end of the book, Mari meets Eric again, and the two quietly begin to bridge the family chasm.

There are still secrets left unrevealed, though - for instance, Rizzuto never bothers to raise the issue of either Eric or Mariko’s fathers. This story is only about the Okadas, she seems to tell us, and no distractions will be allowed into the plot. And Rizzuto manages to leave one secret stubbornly unrevealed: She never quite explains why Emi leaves behind one child and not the other.

Still, the big truth that’s revealed is powerful: The oldest generation, protecting traditional values of image and honor, can commit brutal sins and destroy a family unit. But the youngest generation can play peacemaker in a dysfunctional family, and if loose ends are still left hanging raw like a live wire shooting off sparks, at least the circuit was finally turned back on and the electricity can flow again.

Ultimately, “Why She Left Us” isn’t about the internment. It’s about the ties that bind families together - and the peculiarly Japanese knots of obligation that can snarl and tangle those ties over time. Perhaps Rizzuto’s great accomplishment here is in capturing the tortured dynamics that are inherent in the line, “shikata ga nai” - the Japanese side of her Japanese American background has served her well here.

Rizzuto’s proven she’s a first-rate storyteller - there’s some temptation to assume some of the characters and situations are autobiographical, because her mother was interned at Amache and after the war moved to Hawaii, where Rizzuto was born.

The mother-daughter relationships are certainly painted with an observant eye for human nature, and chockfull of striking details. In one chapter, after Mari gets in trouble for a school essay about her nagging thoughts of a missing brother, she dreads the arrival of her mother at the school principal’s office.

“Mari’s body has a great eight when she moves it: swings her feet over, sits up, clears her throat to attract their attention. Even before Emi hold out her hand, Mari can see her red nail polish. It doesn’t match her navy blue dress, which means she left the house in a hurry when Mrs. Oates called. Emi’s fingers are tight, but not digging; her narrowed eyes seem to be seeing Mari for the first time. She points to Mari’s book bag, asking her without words to pick it up. The principal watches them carefully; she is so interested in what they’re doing that Mari and her mother turn automatically to her, side by side, so she can easily see. Emi squeezes Mari’s hand in little pumps, sending a message Mari can’t understand. She feels like she’s been shoved under a cold shower; she’s trying to keep her skin warm and dry, but the cold is reaching every inch of her, running through her hair, sheeting down the tender skin on her opu and into her belly button, turning her to ice.”

Despite the historical accuracy and observant details that could have been drawn on her own childhood, “Why She Left Us” is fictional. Rizzuto interviewed many former internees about their experiences and created composite experiences from the fragments of sad anecdotes she collected.

But as fiction, the book rings true - there’s truth enough here for anyone who comes from a Japanese family to recognize the inexorable dynamics on display.

This book review ran in the Denver Rocky Mountain News.