Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Jamie Ford's debut novel follows Henry Lee, a Chinese American boy in 1942 Seattle who befriends Keiko, a Japanese American girl, just as the U.S. government begins rounding up Japanese families for wartime internment. The dual timeline — past and present — is easy to follow, and the central friendship is genuinely tender. Ford uses the story to introduce Japanese American internment history in an emotionally accessible way that works well for book clubs. Content notes worth flagging: roughly ten historical racial slurs, some bullying and minor fights, and age-appropriate romance. The prose leans sentimental at times, and the historical treatment is introductory rather than deep. But for readers who want a warm, clean entry point to a painful chapter of American history, this delivers.