Friendship Across Distance and Time: A Review of This Light Between Us

In 1936, ten-year-old Alex Maki, the son of immigrant Japanese strawberry farmers in Washington State, is assigned a pen pal along with his classmates. His is Charlie Lévy, living in Paris, France, who turns out to be…a girl. Despite this inauspicious start, Alex and Charlie initiate a years-long friendship through the mail, one that keeps both of them moving forward when the unimaginable happens.

Charlie loves her city, she tells Alex, and even when Jews are targeted after the Nazi invasion in 1940, she and her family stay, hiding with the help of a mysterious family friend. In December 1941, Germany’s ally Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. enters the war. Within months, Japanese immigrants (issei) and their next-generation descendants (nisei) are rounded up. Alex’s father is arrested and “disappears.” By the end of March 1942, Alex, his older brother, and his mother are deported to the Manzanar internment camp. Alex cannot imagine more horrific conditions than the crowding, foul latrines, bad food, boredom, and curfews. But unbeknown to him, Charlie is going through far worse. A year later, when her letters stop coming, Alex volunteers to fight in Europe for the U.S. Army, hoping his show of patriotism will return his father to the family…and he will somehow find and save Charlie.

Fukuda’s intense, gripping narrative places readers in the midst of state violence that crushes hopes, dreams, and ordinary life. When government propaganda (some of it created by Dr. Seuss, as described in the novel) turns the town against the Makis and other Japanese-Americans who lived alongside them for years, it seems the cruelty is the point. Alex’s brother, a star football quarterback, volunteers to play in a fundraising game for the war effort, but when he arrives on the field he is stripped of his position and publicly humiliated. Fukuda’s protagonist grapples with bitterness and despair, and in the course of the story he goes from being the quiet nerd in his brother’s shadow to someone who would go to the ends of the earth, keeping himself alive in a brutal war, to save those he loves.

Coming from a smaller publisher, this historical novel may fly under the radar for many. It shouldn’t. It’s a gripping war story and a character’s journey that’s hard to forget.