The Rogue Wave

A stunning debut chronicling a Japanese family’s life on the windswept coast of central California and the tragedy of their forced removal and incarceration during World War II

“A truly wonderful novel. . . I have read no other book like this one. Read it, and feel a shift in your way of being in history, a citizen of a nation, and an inhabitant of the earth.” —Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior

A young woman walks down a snowy sidewalk in a Midwestern city. It is 1944, the country is at war, and this is not her home. Rather, she returns in memory to her upbringing on a wild and astonishingly beautiful piece of land: Point Lobos, California.

There, it is the 1930s. And while her family’s commitment to their new country is unshakable, their private rituals are Japanese—ways of bathing and cooking, her father’s sumi-e painting, and a profound respect for nature’s gifts and its dangers. Indeed, dangers await—an unimaginable murder, the suggestion of love, and lack of opportunity all ignite her first consciousness of race. And then comes the towering wave that will sweep away everything she knows—the mass removal of Japanese Americans, stripped of their rights and transported to prison camps in the spring of 1942.

Told with tenderness and rage, The Rogue Wave recounts the losses every family feels, but also the senselessness of history not every family is lucky enough to escape. In this unforgettable American journey, Melia di Kodani paints a powerful portrait of an era whose injustices mirror those of our own.