![]() ![]() ![]() She’s a compelling character, and Urako is an observant and generally eloquent chronicler. The central character is not Urako-the name Aurelia receives from her new family-but Yukako, the Mountain’s daughter. It is, instead, a record of one family’s fortunes during a tumultuous time. This is not, however, the type of sweeping historical fiction that musters a cast of thousands. But Aurelia’s story encompasses the Meiji period, when Japan was opened to Westerners and their modern ideas and technologies, and when indigenous phenomena like the tea ceremony-as well as its practitioners-continued to exist only by adapting to a strange new reality. When the novel begins, the Mountain enjoys the high status and state-subsidized income of an artist. ![]() The head of the Shin household-a large, impressive old man Aurelia refers to as “the Mountain”-is a master of the tea ceremony. ![]() By 1866, she was an orphan, working as a servant for the Shin family in Kyoto. In 1865, Aurelia Bernard was a little girl living with her mother and her uncle, a Catholic priest, in New York. Japan welcomes the West in this historical tale from a first-time novelist. ![]()
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