Eighth grade has come to an end, and Polly, Jo and Ama --- a new generation of sisterhood --- are poised to enter South Bethesda High School. Over summer vacation, the three girls reflect on the day they first met and how their friendships have changed over the years.
In 1959, a young woman, Haruko, marries the Crown Prince of Japan. She is the first nonaristocratic woman to enter the mysterious, hermetic monarchy. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman to accept the marriage proposal of her son, with tragic consequences.
In the spring of 1914, a group of students at the Slade School of Art have gathered for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant is easily distracted by a fellow student, Elinor Brooke. By the time he returns from World War I, Paul must confront not only the overwhelming, perhaps impossible challenge of how to express all that he has seen, but also the fact that life, and love, will never be the same for him again.
Crossing over to adult fiction, celebrated young adult author Meg Rosoff still focuses on young people --- viewed through the lens of an old, world-weary narrator --- in WHAT I WAS, a most unusual coming-of-age novel about friendship and humanity.
In 2005, First Sergeant Charles Monroe King began to write what would become a two-hundred-page journal for his son in case he did not make it home from the war in Iraq. He was killed by a roadside bomb on October 14, 2006. His son, Jordan, was seven months old.
