The Lantern Boats
Synopsis
Against the backdrop of post-war Japan comes a powerful and heart-breaking novel of two displaced people from very different backgrounds, drawn into a web of espionage and betrayal with fatal consequences.
Tokyo, 1951.
Elly Ruskin is trapped between worlds. Half-Japanese, half-Scottish, she is deported from Australia to Japan after the war, but Tokyo is a city Elly barely knows. In a whirlwind romance, she falls in love with a Scottish journalist, and they marry.
Kamiya Jun is a teenage war orphan from the lost Japanese colony of Karafuto. He is smuggled to the mainland on a fishing boat. Captured by the police, he is handed over to the occupation forces and finds himself unwillingly recruited to work in an underground intelligence unit run by a maverick American officer.
Now Elly thinks her husband is having an affair, and her suspicions will lead her down a treacherous path that will put everyone in danger. Jun might be the only person who can help her. Discover an absolutely beguiling story of intrigue and the human spirit set against the backdrop of Japan in transition.