PALMDALE – The Palmdale City Library has selected The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka as the Featured Book of the Month for April. The Buddha in the Attic was a 2011 National Book Award Finalist, the Winner of the 2012 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist.
The Buddha in the Attic is about a group of young Japanese “picture brides” who sailed to America in the early 1900s to become the wives of men they had never met and knew only by their photographs. The novel follows the women from their perilous trip by boat, to their difficult first days of being new brides, to their back breaking work in the fields, and to their raising of children that would ultimately deny their heritage.
Otsuka is also the author of When the Emperor was Divine, the story of the internment of a Japanese American family during World War II. The Buddha in the Attic is available for check out from the Palmdale City Library in standard print and audio editions.
For further information on the Featured Book of the Month, contact the Palmdale City Library at 661-267-5600.
(Information via press release from the City of Palmdale.)