In this sweeping WWII historical romance threaded with magic and myth, two star-crossed Japanese American teenagers find a love more powerful than the gods—inspired by the author's true family history of internment and resilience.
A divine favor can change everything.
1942. War rumbles across the world, gods stir in the wind, and two lives are set on a collision course that will change them forever.
Seventeen-year-old Ren Hamada has always been defined by his troubled past, while Violet Aratani has only ever worried about keeping her straight-A grades and helping her parents run their beloved print shop. The two have little in common beyond the old magic that thrums in their worn family relics—and the fact that they’re Japanese American in a country determined to cast them as the enemy.
Forced out of their homes and into ramshackle wooden barracks in the California desert by the US government, Ren and Violet collide. In a barbed wire world where everything they thought they knew is upside-down, the magnetic pull between them is the only thing that makes sense.
But there’s more than just desert dust swirling in the air. A god walks among them, his mortal form tethered to the camp, and only Violet and Ren hold the key to freeing him—an act that would earn them an immeasurable reward. Yet with tensions rising and their lives on the line, is even a divine favor powerful enough to save them?
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