Dreaming Water

In the hands of another writer, this could have easily been an exercise in depressing predictabiility. Instead, Gail Tsukiyama gifts her readers with an honest and balanced portrayal of a family that transforms the loss of dreams into a real life that holds meaning. Each character makes a decision to not allow circumstance to define or limit their spirit or their options, and while not easily or immediately, each is able to become more than they initially expected. As with "Women of the Silk", we see how each thread, each event, each relationship is connected and has a purpose that contributes to the total fabric. A particularly good reflection on love, family, friendship, emerging insights and importance of entering life and relationships without reservation.

Dreaming Water by Gail TsukiyamaThe value of life and the shortness of it all: one of the themes that are touched upon in DREAMING WATER. Gail Tsukiyama's style of writing creates a very beautiful story about a woman who is dying of Werner's disease, a disease that ages a person at twice the normal speed. Hana Maruyama was born like any normal healthy child, but by an early age her parents, Max and Cate, noticed that her growth patterns were not normal. There was something terribly wrong with her, and after much testing with doctors, by the time she is 13, they have diagnosed Hana with having Werner's disease. Knowing that Hana's life would be short and that her parents would most likely outlive her, they treat every day as something precious, and every passing year as something very special. And with each passing year, Hana's symptoms worsen. She seems to be fine for many years, until she develops cataracts while in college, and from then on, her life becomes a roller coaster. She is no longer in control of her body. Every day Hana wonders what new symptom would she experience, as her body ages faster than it should. By age 38, Hana appears the age of an eighty-year-old woman.The book spans a period of two days, but within those two days, the reader sees into the thoughts of both Cate and Hana and learns about their lives. We learn about Hana's father Max, who was a second generation Japanese American, interned as a boy with his family in the camps during WW II. Max, who had died only a few years ago, lives through the thoughts of both Cate and Hana, and we learn about his years spent at Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming, and how he dreamt of water and how much he longed for it. Living in the parched dry lands of the camp, Max lived a life of imprisonment and shame. He brought this shame with him after the war was over and the Japanese Americans were released. Max rarely talked about the camps with Hana or his wife. It was from Max's father that Hana learned about her father's family and their time spent in Wyoming.We learn about Hana's grandparents, and their love for their granddaughter. Max and Cate's marriage was not approved of by either set of parents. Cate's parents disapproved of their daughter marrying a Japanese American, and Max's parents had hoped their son would marry "a nice Japanese girl". Max in turn told them, "But I'm marrying a nice Italian American girl".But the birth of Hana, a few years after their wedding, helps unite both families together. Both grandparents are ecstatic, and finally acknowledge the marriage that they had originally disapproved.One of the themes of DREAMING WATER is racial prejudice, but the true story is about Hana. She knows she only has a few years left, and so the story takes us into two days of Hana's life, her memories, and the people she loves. The book is very short and concise, yet Tsukiyama was able to fit an entire story about the Maruyama family and their love for t

This Tsukiyama's new novel moved me deeply as her previous works. Hana is a Japanese-American woman, whose disease stopped her growing in her teens and caused rapid aging. Racial discrimination (her father had been interned in a camp in the WWII) and the disease prohibited her from enjoying youth and life. After her father died, she has been only living with her Italian-American mother, Cate. The story deals with their only two days and their recollections, but on the first day's night, Hana's friend, Laura came to see them with her daughters who were Hana's godchildren. Especially the elder child Josephine got nervous since her parents' separation, so Laura wanted her children to meet her best friend, Hana, and of course she wanted to meet Hana for herself. The storytelling is perfect. So are the details. For example, on the first encounter, Josephine simply said to herself that small Hana reminded her of "a character in a George Lucas or Steven Spielberg movie." And then things began to change... Thank you, Gail, for your heartwarming story, especially in this new age of discrimination. I want to read more about Josephine's changing.

Previously to reading Dreaming Water, I read The Samurai's Garden and fell in love with Gail Tsukiyama's characters and storyline. I seriously doubted that I would ever find another book by this author which I would ever love or think about as much as this title. But now that I have finished reading Dreaming Water, her newest title, I must admit that I loved this book just a bit more. Perhaps it is the mother in me as to why this book had such an impact on me or because Tsuliyama has the rare ability to entice her her readers with her first words and doesn't let go until the last ones. As she did in The Samurai's Garden, in this novel, Tsukiyama introduces us to wonderful charcters who live unusual lives due to physical and emotional limitations which in part are forced upon them. Told in alternating voices, we come to know these characters, feel for them and grieve along with them. And all the while one keeps asking themselves, why do bad things happen to good people? Not an easy questions to answer. But in the hands of a gifted writer like Tsukiyama, this book which takes place over two days is written as delicately and beautiflly as the gardens and flowers she so often describes in her books.Against prejudices fueled by WW II, in 1960,Cat and Max, establish a life in Nothern California in a small university town. Max, a Japanese Amercian, teaches while Cat takes care of their one precious daughter, Hana. It is this child, who is raised with the background of her mother's Italtian family and her father's Japanese heritage that is at the center of Dreaming Water. While Hana is a bright and lively child she is very small for her age which concerns her parents. Then at the age of 13 she is diagnosed with Werner's Disease, a disease which brings on the rapid onset of old age although the effects won't become obvious till she is in her 20's. Terrified for her future Cat and Max are determined to bring Hana up with as normal a life as possible. Now the years have passed quickly by and Max is dead and Hana at 38 resembles a woman of 80. Her mother, at 62, is Hana's solecaregiver and still grieves for her husband who has been dead for three years. Cat also mourns for the missed opportunites and life her daughter has missed out on because of this disease. She worries about how much time she has left with Hana and what she will do once Hana dies. And Hana also thinks about her missed opporutunities and adventures and worries about her mother's life without both her husband and someday her daughter. Then Hana's childhood friend, Laura, on the verge of a divorce, comes to visit Hana with her two young children. Hana hasn't seen this friend in many years although they correspond frequently and she is the god-mother to her children. Josephine, the older of the two children, at 13 is sullen and angry at her mother and father over their impending divorce. Clearly she is not an endearing child to anybody but is intrigued by Han and her illness.

Though I loved Samurai's Garden, Dreaming Water has become my favorite Tsukiyama book.Though the subject of a woman with Werner's Syndrome sounds like it would make one long, depressing book, it's assuredly not.It's funny, warm and ultimately uplifting.