Who is sending lovely little cards and gifts to Alma Belasco, a resident of San Francisco's Lark House nursing home? To find out, we'll have to go back to 1939, when Alma's parents send her from Poland to San Francisco to live with a wealthy aunt and uncle after Germany invades. She and Ichimei Fukuda, the Japanese gardener's son, fall in love but are wrenched apart when thousands of Japanese Americans are interned during the war. Through the decades, they keep their passion alive—and secret. With a ten-city tour.

When they first met as children in California in the early days of World War II, Alma Belasco and Ichimei Fukuda were inseparable. Alma's Polish family had sent her to live with her wealthy aunt and uncle to ride out the war, while Ichimei's father, the Belascos' groundskeeper, was a respected friend of Alma's uncle. Pearl Harbor and the interment of Japanese Americans separated Alma and Ichimei for years. When they reconnected, friendship turned to passionate love nurtured by the realistic workarounds that stood in place of a life together. Throughout the years, despite spouses and children, the two met whenever possible. But 70-plus years in, Alma's health is failing at the quirky senior citizen facility, Lark House, and her grandson and his sweetheart, Alma's devoted caregiver, are in a race against time to get the full scope of her tender, flawed, enduring love story on paper before it's too late. VERDICT Allende's latest (Maya's Notebook), a glorious family saga, with its rich cast of decent, complex characters caught up in America's struggles with war, prejudice, AIDS, and society's old taboos that are fast disappearing, is a beautiful tribute to devotion. Readers will do well to savor Allende's literary artistry. [See Prepub Alert, 5/11/15; No. 1 November LibraryReads Pick.]—Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI